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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



Sabbath or Lord's Day? 



WHICH? 



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By D. R. DTTNGAN, 

Author of "On. the Kock." 



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CHRISTIAN PUBLISHING CO., 

St. Louis, Mo. 



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COPTKIGHT, 18S5, BT 
CHRISTIAN PUBLISHING CO, 



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Sabbath or Lord's Day ? 

WHICH? 



CHAPTER I. 



THE STATEMENT OF THE QUESTION. 

The question is one of importance, as it concerns a matter of 
obedience to God. If God has required us to keep one day out 
of every seven, and if blessings and penalties depend upon our 
obedience or disobedience, it well becomes us to know whether 
we are in the way of blessing or cursing. All through the Old 
Testament, after the giving the law from Sinai, the Sabbath is 
made binding upon the people of Israel. Not only so, but it 
was enforced by very severe penalties. Like other features of 
that law, men must observe it or die. Found guilty of violating 
this law, the rebel must surely be put to death. Even picking 
up sticks on that holy day was a capital offence. No one at- 
tempts to deny these facts. 

Again, it is just as evident that the seventh day was the 
Sabbath day as that there was a Sabbath day required to be 
kept by any one. The commandment was not to keep one day 
out of seven, but to keep the seventh day. If the Israelite had 
kept the first day of the week, with all the solemnity of the 
law, but not the seventh, he would have been regarded as a 
violator of the law, and punished accordingly. Indeed, he 
might have observed all the other six, but if he had not remem- 
bered the seventh to keep it holy, he would have been regarded 
as a transgressor of the law. This also is acknowledged by 
every one who has read the Scriptures on the subject. 

If the Sabbath is now binding, are the penalties then belong- 
ing to the institution, yet to be inflicted upon the violator of 
the law ? If not, when were these penalties removed, and by 



4 SABBATH OB LOED S DAY '.' 

whom? If those penalties have been removed, are there any 
others come to take their place ? And if there are other penal- 
ties, not found in the law of M ses, where can we find them ? 
If there are any changes in the severity of the penalties, or in 
the rigor of the law. how can we assure ourselves of the fa : 

If this law of the Sabbath is still binding, and yet without 
penalties for its violation, or blessings for its faithful observ- 
ance, then it may be a matter of small moment to many per- 
sons, whether they keep it or not. If the blessing pronounced 
upon faithfulness to this requirement is eternal life, and the 
curse to be visited on the disobedient eternal death, where can 
we ibid the statement which will warrant our fai: 

Here is now a very earnest effort being made by Advent- 
ists and ^rventh-Day Baptists to bring about a return to Sab- 

:li-keeping, according to the law. It I have understood 
them correctly their positions ar~ as follows : 

1. The B Vbbath was given at the creation of the world. 

2. It was given to all men. and was to be observed during 
all time. 

It was to be observed on the seventh day of the week. 

4. The law of which it was a part has never been done 
sway. 

Now, beyond all question, if their theory is right, their 
practice ;n not be wrong. I understand the religious world 
generally to agree with their vie^vs concerning the giving of 
that law. as to form, time and extent Indeed, I am not aware 
that either of the four positions taken by Sabbatarians is 
dissented from by the average religious teacher of to-day. Still, 
the pra::i x is very iistmck The whole religious world, aside 
from the parties already named, keep the first day of the week 
instead of the seventh, which was required to be observed by 

Here is a manifest inconsistency, and no man can deny it. 
If God required us to keep the seventh day of the w : 
keeping the first will not be obeying that command. And it 
;dn to talk of keeping the spirit of a law when we delib- 
erately violate its letter. It is impossible to be religiously 
rigb - iripturally wrong at the same time. If God com- 

manded all men to keep the :h day of the week, and 



SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY ? 5 

has never changed or removed that law, then we must either 
keep the seventh day or violate the commandment of God. 
This is so self-evident that to elaborate or repeat it would 
indicate a want of confidence in my readers. 

Some have been heard to say, however, that the Sabbath has 
been changed from the seventh to the first day of the week. 
But the Bible does not know anything of any such a change. 
No inspired man ever called the first day of the week the Sab- 
bath. It was centuries after the last apostle was dead before 
men began to speak of keeping the Sabbath by observing the 
first day. 

It will be said, however, that the Sabbath, as required of the 
Israelite, could not be observed in cold climates, and hence the 
rigor of the law must necessarily have been somewhat abated. 
But if any such necessity has existed, He who gave the law has 
surely known it quite as well as any of His creatures, and has 
therefore, somewhere in His word, removed the severities of the 
law, or, He has not intended it to be regarded in these cold cli- 
mates. But if it was not intended for these northern countries 
then it was not meant to be universal. Hence all that may be 
legitimately argued from the fact of a needed change in the 
severities of the fourth command, is that it was not intended for 
persons living in cold climates. No one. can change a law in any 
feature, except He who gave it. And if God had made any such 
a change, such amending enactment could be found somewhere 
in the Bible. But as no such enactment can be found, the law 
remains as it was. 

I have heard a peculiar argument against the Sabbath to the 
effect that all men cannot observe the Sabbath at the same time ; 
that when it is daylight on one side of the globe, it is night on 
the other. Hence, while one half of the world are keeping the 
Sabbath, the other part will be busily at work. They illustrate 
by starting two men around the world from the same place, but 
in opposite directions. With one the days get shorter, and 
with the other, they grow longer, so that the man going east has 
gained a day on his neighbor, at their next meeting ; hence one 
will be keeping one day for Sabbath and the other will be keep- 
ing the next. And some ingenious person has made a reckon- 
ing, showing clearly enough, to himself, that we are really now 



6 SABBATH OR LORD'S DAT? 

keeping the seventh, and not the first day. All this seems to me 
very much like surrendering the question. These men say — 
without intending it — that the Sabbath keepers are right in their 
demands, and that it is necessary for us to find some way of 
excusing ourselves. "Whatever difficulties there may be found 
in keeping the Sabbath in other countries or under other circum- 
stances than could be found in Palestine, at the time it was 
intended for the Israelites, may show that it was not given to 
other peoples, but can have no effect to prove that the law has 
in any sense changed. 

Again it is argued that Jesus taught the superiority, not only 
of man. but also of the beast, to the strict demands of the Sab- 
bath. It is claimed that Jesus violated this law when occasion 
required, and justified himself in doing so on the ground that 
human want was of more importance than the letter of the law. 
But no man has yet been able to find a single instance in which 
Jesus violated any declaration of the law given by Moses. He 
could not do so after the statement we find in Matt. 5 : 17-19 : 

" Think not that I am come to destroy the law. or the 
prophets ; I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For verily I 
say unto you. Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or tittle shall 
in no vise pass from the law. till all be fulfilled. Whosoever 
therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and 
shall teach men so. he shall be called the least in the kingdom of 
heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall 
be called great in the kingdom of heaven." 

ZSTo one could be the author of that language and then violate 
that law himself without gross inconsistency, such as would 
unfit him for a public teacher. 

Christ neither violated the law nor winked at such conduct on 
the part of any one else. No case has yet been reported, and no 
such teaching can be found as coming from Him. 

Sabbatarians are claiming, and with some show of reason, 
that a large majority of the Protestant clergy believe just as 
they do respecting the sanctity of the Sabbath, and that, if their 
popularity and salaries were not endangered, would advocate 
the keeping of the seventh day just as they do. They conclude 
this from their admissions, as before stated, which legitimately 
bind them to the law of the Sabbath. They further claim, too 



SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY? 7 

that the devotion of the Christian world to the first day of the 
week, is a superstition, which has no higher origin than the 
edict of a heathen king. 

Now to my mind, the question resolves itself into this : Are 
we now under the law of which the Sabbath was a part, or is the 
Sabbath now binding on Christians ? For certain it is, if we 
are to keep the Sabbath, then we are bound to observe the 
seventh day of the week. 

No matter how the law was changed, unless Jehovah changed 
it, if it is yet binding, it is our place to keep it to the end of 
life, unless sooner released from its obligations by Him who 
gave it. 



CHAPTEE II. 



REASONS FOR KEEPING THE SABBATH EXAMINED UPON THE 
HYPOTHESIS OF A PRE-MOSAIC REQUIREMENT. 

I. The first reason usually assigned for keeping the Sab- 
bath is that it was given at creation, to all men and for all 
time. 

This position is called in question. If we can have no law 
respecting the Sabbath without the use of that word, then 
there was no command from Jehovah to any man to observe 
the Sabbath for at least 2,500 years after the world was framed. 
In Exodus 16 : 23 is the first occurrence of the word in the 
English Scriptures. Nor is there any text which would con- 
tain that word if properly translated. Just how a law was in 
existence requiring men to observe the seventh day of the 
week, and yet no mention made of the fact in the Bible, will 
never be solved in the minds of those who are disposed to 
think for themselves. 

But some one answers, We find Cain and Abel offering sac- 
rifice, and yet no mention made of the fact that God had 
required such service at their hands. Not only so, but Paul 
says that Abel offered by faith. And, as we know that faith 
is the belief of testimony, it therefore follows that commands 



8 SABRATH OR LORD*? DAY ? 

are sometimes enacted when there is no notice given of the 
fact. 

This, however, is a long ways from the case in hand. Here 
we find sacrifice. Though we have no mention made of the 
original command, we do have mention made of the practice. 
t But there is no mention made of command or practice respect- 
ing the Sabbath for twenty-five centuries. 

But it is said that God not only rested on the seventh day. 
but he sanctified it in commemoration of that fact. Hence it 
was set apart to a holy or a sacred use, and as this was at the 
beginning, the law was known from that time and observed by 
all who feared the Lord. 

Two things are taken for granted here which are not granted. 
First, it is presumed that ''sanctified,'' when said of the 
seventh day. means, necessarily, set apart to be observed by 
men as a day of worship; and second, that it was thus set 
apart at the creation of the world. But neither of these is by 
any means certain. ''Sanctified" might refer to a holy joy in 
the mind of God: or it might indicate that God would mark 
the time, and in the ages to come require his people to abstain 
from labor on that day. Hence the language cannot mean 
anything absolutely which will be of any service to the cause 
for which it is used. 

Xor is this all. The deductions from the supposed existence 
of the law of the Sabbath are by no means legitimate. For 
instance, if the law had been given at the creation it would not 
follow that all men were expected to obey it for all time. ^Ve 
are sure, from the reference to sacrifice, that an offering for 
sin was required, and that it was a sacrifice of blood, but these 
services are not therefore required of all men and for all time. 
When the seventh day was sanctified is not indicated in the 
language referred to. I will quote Gen. 2 : 2, 3: 

"And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had 
made ; and he rested on the seventh day from all the work 
which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and 
sanctified it : because that in it he had rested from all his work 
which he had created and made." 

£Tow it was not the first seventh day in which the sanctifica- 
tion took place, for he sanctified the day because that in it he had 



SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY? 9 

rested. The day was not wholly given to silence and inactivity ; 
that is not the meaning. The thought is that he discontinued 
the creative or formative work on that day. 

The following sensible treatment of the subject is found in 
Smith's Bible Dictionary, Am. Ed.-, Vol. iv., page 2763 : 

" We have hitherto viewed the Sabbath merely as a Mosaic 
ordinance. It remains to ask whether there be indications of 
its having been previously known and observed ; and, secondly, 
whether it have an universal scope and authority over all men. 

" The former of these questions is usually approached with a 
feeling of its being connected with the latter, and, perhaps, 
therefore, with a bias in favor of the view which the questioner 
thinks will support his opinion of the latter. It seems, how- 
ever, to us, that we may dismiss any anxiety as to the results 
we may arrive at concerning it. No doubt, if we see strong 
reason for thinking that the Sabbath had a pre-Mosaic exist- 
ence, we see something in it that has more than a Mosaic 
character and scope. But it might have had such without an 
universal authority, unless we are prepared to ascribe that to 
the prohibition of eating blood or things strangled. And again, 
it might have originated in the law of Moses, and yet possess 
an universal scope, and an authority over all men, and through* 
all time. Whichever way, therefore, the* second of our ques- 
tions is to be determined, we may easily approach the first 
without anxiety. 

" The first and chief argument of those who maintain that the 
Sabbath was known before Moses, is the reference to it in 
Gen. 2 : 2, 3. This is considered to represent it as coeval with 
man, being instituted at the creation, or, at least, as Lightfoot 
views the matter, immediately upon the fall. This latter 
opinion is so entirely without rational ground of any kind that 
we may dismiss it at once. We have no materials for ascertain- 
ing or even conjecturing, which was put forth first, the record 
of the creation, or the Fourth Commandment. If the latter, 
then the reference to the Sabbath in the former, is abundantly 
natural. Had, indeed, the Hebrew tongue, the variety of 
preterite tenses of the Greek, the words in Genesis might 
require careful consideration in that regard ; but as the case is, 
no light can be had from grammar ; and on the supposition of 



10 SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY? 

these being written after the Fourth Commandment, their 
absence, or that of any equivalent to them, would be really 
marvelous." 

Nearly all able critics are of the opinion that the whole of 
Genesis was written after the law had been given at Sinai. 
Hence, as Moses had learned that the Fourth Commandmer.t 
was to keep in memory the creation of the world, the most 
natural thing would be for him to mention the sanctification of 
that day in connection with the account of the creation. This 
has been the manner of historians and biographists in all time. 
It is in this way that we speak of General Washington when he 
was a boy. And yet no man would understand us to say that he 
was a general at that tender age. As our learned author has 
indicated, there are no rules of grammar which require us to 
regard the time of that sanctification as having occurred 
previous to the giving of the law on Mt. Sinai, and as it is most 
in accord with all the facts known to us, to regard it as never 
having been mentioned before that event, it is safer to say that 
Moses referred to the sanctification of the Sabbath, as having 
taken place when the law was given at Sinai. This will account 
for the fact that no mention is made of any law of that nature 
during all these centuries. x 

In appropriating this text the friends of the Sabbath have to 
assume every essential feature of the argument : 

1. They assume that Gen. 2: 2, 3, describes an event which 
took place at the foundation of the world. 

2. They assume in the second place, that " blessed and sancti- 
fied" require that man should observe that day as a day of rest, 
without any mention being made of the fact. 

3. They assume in the third place, that if the law had been 
given at that time, it would therefore be binding upon all men 
for all time. 

These are the very essentials, in the whole matter, and yet 
they are assumed ; not one of them can be sustained. 

It has sometimes been argued that Gen. 4 : 3, presents the idea 
of a pre-Mosaic Sabbath : "And in process of time " they 
render, "And in the end of days," which, they tell us, shows 
that they had knowledge of some artificial measurement of 
time, most likely the Sabbath. 



SABBATH OB LOBD'S DAY? 11 

This comes from too fruitful an imagination. The language 
does not indicate any artificial measurement of time, nor any 
division of time whatever. It is equal to saying that it occurred 
in the history of this family, etc. And if there was any division 
of time in the language, it would be more easily interpreted of 
the new moon, or of some measurement of time which we know 
to have been before the people. But the seizure of this and 
many similar passages of Scripture, only to force them into 
some sort of support of their theory, contrary to all probability 
and even possibility of meaning, only shows how far mere 
speculators will go in search of support for a favorite dogma. 

Again we are told that this arbitrary division of time is to be 
seen in the seven days of Noah, and also in the week which 
Jacob fulfilled for Kachel (Gen. 29 : 27). While these things 
would accord well with the idea of a pre-Mosaic Sabbath, yet 
the existence of such an institution is not a necessary inference 
therefrom. If they could be accounted for in no other way, 
then we would give them a prominent place in the consideration 
of the subject. But such is not the case. Seven days is a 
natural division of the moon, by which we know that the 
ancients measured the year. And yet, for all that, the third day 
is of more frequent occurrence in Genesis than the seventh. It 
is not a natural division of time, nor does any one claim it to be 
sacred. And yet, the word week, in Gen. 29 : 27, has most 
probable reference to seven years, during which Jacob should 
continue his toils with Laban. It must be conceded that the 
word week everywhere else in the Old Testament has the mean- 
ing of seven years. Hence, when we come to look at this 
argument, there seems to be nothing in it. 

The Sabbath must be found in some way, hence the ancient 
cities are put under tribute to the cause. Mr. Smith finds in 
Nineveh, (1869) the fifth of the Assyrian tablets, and also a re- 
ligious calendar, in that ancient city. Here are evidences that 
the people knew of the Sabbath, and probably kept it. This, 
too, is supposed to have been written before the law of Moses 
was given on Mt. Sinai. Hence that people had carried down 
with them this religious requirement. But when we find the 
name of Merodach in this, we are quite sure of the later origin 
of this production. Certain, it is, that Solomon largely iniln- 



12 SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY? 

enced the nations of the east long before these tablets were 
probably written. And still further, it will be seen in these, 
that the service of the New Moons, and the feast days of the 
Jews stand in the same relation to time that the Sabbath does : 

"Every month without fail he made holy assembly days." And 
the whole of this tablet shows the common Jewish origin, with 
the after glosses of heathenism. 

I have no need to say to any one who reads history that all 
reckoning upon dates, which claim to have been given, among 
the heathen nations before the seventh century, B. C, is ex- 
ceedingly doubtful as to its correctness. Hence, since we know 
that these writings give certain evidence of their Jewish origin, 
nothing more need to be said of them. 

A very strange argument, and yet a very common one, is that 
the form of the law of the Sabbath in the Decalogue is proof 
that it was an old institution. They say that as it there occurs, 
it has all the form of a requirement already known. But who 
does not know that the Sabbath was given a month before that? 
In Exodus 16 : 23, the word occurs for the first time in the Bible. 
But this was a month before the law was given at Mt. Sinai. 
If it could be said that the requirement to keep the Sabbath as 
it is found in Ex. 16 : 23 indicates that it was an old institution 
and well understood by the people, then there would be some 
argument in it. Even then, however, it would only be sug- 
gestive. 

Ex. 16 : 22, 23 : "And it came to pass, that on the sixth day 
they gathered twice as much bread, two omers for one man; 
and all the rulers of the congregation came and told Moses. 
And he said unto them, This is that which the Lord hath said, 
To-morrow is the rest of the holy Sabbath unto the Lord ; bake 
that which ye will bake to-day, and seethe that ye will seethe ; 
and that which remaineth over lay Up for you to be kept until 
the morning." 

1. They are not reminded to renew their faithfulness in 
keeping an ordinance which they had previously known, but 
had, on some account, neglected. 

2. But the institution is given in the form in which a new 
commandment is presented. 

3. There is no account in their history that they had ever 



SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY? 13 

kept it or known anything about it. 

4. Every ruler seemed perfectly surprised that two portions 
of manna was given on the sixth day, and could not imagine why 
it should be so. If they had ever known anything about the 
Sabbath day before this, their ignorance and astonishment is 
perfectly unaccountable. 

If we had found that the law of the Sabbath was given at the 
creation, it would not follow that all peoples are to observe it, 
for all time. Hence, in every way, the argument for a pre- 
Mosaic Sabbath, must be regarded as a complete failure. 



CHAPTER III. 

TO WHOM WAS THE DAW OF THE SABBATH GIVEN" ? 

It is maintained that the Sabbath was given to all men, 
and was, therefore, intended to be a universal law. Of course 
the purpose of this argument is to find that the removal of the 
law given at Mt. Sinai can have nothing to do with the cessa- 
tion of the Sabbath. 

1. The first proof of the correctness of this position usually 
relied upon, is the numerical argument. A careful gleaning of 
the whole of the Scriptures is made and the number of times 
which the Sabbath is commanded, in one way or another, is 
stated. This is done to show the importance of the institution 
in the mind of the Author. 

Surely this is a work of gratuity. If we could so far forget 
our logic as to imagine the possibility of maintaining any 
proposition in this way, we could easily find that almost every 
requirement of the Old Testament was intended for all men. 
Sacrifices, circumcision, new moons, sabbatical years, and 
almost the entire law has been required with equal emphasis. 
Xo one doubts that the Sabbath was binding on the people to 
whom it was given, and that it was to continue in force till it 
should be taken out of the way by the same authority which 
gave it. 



14 SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY ? 

2. But the great argument is derived from the statement of 
the Master: ''The Sabbath was made for man, and not man 
for the Sabbath." Mark 2 : 27. They repeat this very frequent- 
ly, with very telling effect, at least on themselves. 

And yet everything that was said of the Sabbath in this re- 
spect could have been said with equal propriety concerning 
every other Old Testament requirement. Every decree that 
God ever gave to the race, or any portion of it, was given to 
man, or made for man. But there is nothing in it to show that 
it was intended for all men. This is a rule in hermeneutics, 
agreed to by all who have really studied that science : Nothing 
should ever be applied to any subject not before the mind of the 
author at the time of writing or speaking. Indeed, the first thing 
that the exegete has to do in beginning his work, is to deter- 
mine the purpose of the author, so that in the work of interpre- 
tation he may never go beyond that purpose in his exegesis. 

3STow with that rule before us, let us turn and see if Jesus 
was intending to say anything respecting the extensiveness of 
that institution. The question was, had his disciples violated 
that commandment ? If we know the law in the matter, we 
know they had not. And as for their traditions, Jesus cared 
nothing. But while he and his disciples were free from trans- 
gressions of the law, they were not. They had violated that 
commandment, and excused others in doing the same. They 
had done so, too, when they had regarded it necessary to sus- 
tain life, or even to remove suffering. And yet upon such a 
basis as that, no law should be violated. One who was the Lord 
of the Sabbath might do so, for he would be unerring in his 
opinion of the necessity of the case. Hence he adds : " The 
Son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath." The argument, then, 
of Jesus stands : (1) My disciples have violated no law. See 
Matt. 12 : 7. (2) You agree that human life is more than keep- 
ing the Sabbath, and if there is therefore ever a conflict be- 
tween the two, the Sabbath will have to give way ; and (3) I am 
the Lord of the Sabbath, and can therefore dispose of it as I 
please. Hence it will appear to every careful reader that in 
making Mark 2 : 27 testify [on the subject of the extent of the 
Sabbath, they have done violence to one of the most funda- 
mental rules of interpretation ; that they have insisted on a 



SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY? 15 

meaning that was not in any way before the mind of the Lord 
when the language was employed. 

It now seems proper that I should state some reasons for 
denying the proposition. This I must do very briefly : 

1. The Scriptures directly state that they were only given to 
ancient Israel. If this be true, the question ought to end. For 
if He who gave the Sabbath says it was only intended for the 
descendants of Jacob, no true believer will dare affirm the 
proposition which we now oppose. 

Exodus 34 :27 : "And the Lord said unto Moses, write thou 
these words : for after the tenor of these words I have com- 
manded a covenant with thee and with Israel." 

No man, not even Adventists, deny that this covenant com- 
manded, contained the Sabbath. Hence this law was given to 
Moses and the people of Israel. If this law belonged to others, 
what emphasis could have been placed on its being the property 
of Moses and that people ? 

Exodus 31 : 13, 16, 17 : " Speak thou also unto the children of 
Israel, saying, Verily my Sabbaths ye shall keep : for it is a sign 
between me and you throughout your generations ; that ye may 
know that I am the Lord that doth sanctify you." * * * * 
" Wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, to 
observe the Sabbath throughout their generations, for a 
perpetual covenant. It is a sign between me and the children 
of Israel forever : for in six days the Lord made heaven and 
earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed." 

Now whatever was a sign between God and his people was 
not equally intended for other people. God gave to Abraham 
and his seed the sign of circumcision. But if that mark had 
been put upon all other peoples, it would not have been a sign 
between God and the seed of Abraham. So with the law of the 
Sp^bbath, it could not have been a sign between God and that 
people if it had been given to others as well as to them. Hence, 
its being a sign is certain proof that it was not intended for any 
other nation. 

Deuteronomy 4:8: "And what nation is there so great, that 
hath statutes and judgments so righteous as all this law which 
I set before you this day ? " 

This question can only be answered in the negative: "No 



16 SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY? 

nation." It was intended to affirm that no nation was in pos- 
session of this law. With this statement men ought to be 
satisfied, so that when God says no other nation possesses this law 
the whole question should be dropped. 

Deuteronomy 5:3: " The Lord made not this covenant with 
our fathers, but with us, even us, who are all of us here alive 
this day." 

Now when God is said to have made that covenant with that 
people only, and not even with their fathers, it must be a strange 
form of faith that will contradict him by saying that he did 
make it with their fathers, and not only with them, but with all 
men and for all time. But some one may say that this covenant 
here spoken of, did not contain the Sabbath. This, however, is 
not correct. Eead right along and see what the covenant was 
that was only given to them and not even to their fathers. 

Coming to verse fifteen, we read : "And remember that thou 
wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God 
brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a 
stretched-out arm : therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee 
to keep the Sabbath day." 

This not only shows that the Sabbath was not given to others 
but why it was given to the Israelites. 

2. A second reason for believing that God only intended the 
Sabbath for the descendants of Jacob, is that it is never spoken 
of as in any way connected with any duty which He required of 
the Gentiles. They are never reproved for not having kept it. 
And yet it is certain that they never kept it. 

He reproved the Jews for the want of faithfulness to that 
commandment ; why not condemn the Gentiles for like negli- 
gence ? He reproved them for their many sins ; he judged 
them for their wickedness and maltreatment of Israel ; for then 
idolatry ; for their adultery and sodomy ; for their want of 
natural affection. Nay more, He shows clearly the ground of 
their responsibility. But never does He reprove them for not 
observing the Sabbath. Now, .upon the hypothesis that this law 
was given to them, these things are inexplicable. 

3. The Sabbath could not be kept by those who live in cold 
climates. This will be seen in the nature of the institution. 

(a) JS r o work should be done. 



SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY? 17 

Exodus 20 : 10 : " But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the 
Lord thy God : in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy 
son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor 
thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates." See 
Deut. 5 : 14. 

(b) They were to abide in their places. 

Exodus 16 : 29 : " See, for that the Lord hath given you the 
Sabbath, therefore he giveth you on the sixth day the bread of 
two days : abide ye every man in his place, let no man go out of 
his place on the seventh day." 

(c) They must not even kindle a fire on the Sabbath. 
Exodus 35 : 3 : "Ye shall kindle no fire throughout your 

habitation upon the Sabbath day." 

(d) TJie penalty for violating the law of the Sabbath was death. 
Exodus 31 : 14, 15 : " Ye shall keep the Sabbath therefore ; for 

it is holy unto you. Every one that defileth it shall surely be 
put to death : for whosoever doeth any work therein, that soul 
shall be cut off from among his people. Six days may work be 
done ; but in the seventh is the Sabbath of rest, holy to the 
Lord : whosoever doeth any work in the Sabbath day, he shall 
surely be put to death." 

Exodus 35:2: " Six days shall work be done, but on the 
seventh day there shall be to you a holy day, a Sabbath of rest to 
the Lord : whosoever doeth any work therein shall be put to 
death." 

Numbers 15 : 32-36 : "And while the children of Israel were 
in the wilderness, they found a man that gathered sticks on the 
Sabbath day. And they that found him gathering sticks brought 
him unto Moses and Aaron, and unto all the congregation. 
And they put him in ward because it was not declared what 
should be done to him. And the Lord said unto Moses : The 
man shall be surely put to death : all the congregation shall 
stone him with stones without the camp. And all the congre- 
gation brought him without the camp and stoned him with 
stones, and he died ; as the Lord commanded Moses." 

No one claims that such a law could be observed in this 
climate, say nothing of the Laplands, or the great area of north- 
ern countries. Hence, we are compelled to say that the law was 

not intended for any but those living in a land where the people 

2 



15 RA-RRA1 






gave it being. 
Has the law been abated in its rigor, and yet left standing? 

UtIt .It 3i It is :1tl: I: Is ;:_ :zly -::'. rEn: :Et l;-.~ -:i 

:lr S: "::..'_ n:~ s.rnl-. ': \;. :Et i-Tmilry "_; = \tt_ : '..."irrl :r 
::\irz. :■— :■-. Zv: :: :Z1 :Eis. :lr 3:::lr En: — 5 n: nir-r :li:in iz 
i:~s :f Tilrrln:;rr5 :•: l-L-zsn. -Et- - : -"-"Z: :"..: : n:* -r : :r 
tlttIt :f :Zt 1?.~ Z_:\Z1 in :.:/ — isc ir.ssrEl :Z1 sZ:nli c-r ril- 
zllrl. Et:::. Zit : n> — :.~ r:r ZiffT :e:l:.r- :■: .IIs^tt-e-m : _ 



Prizi :Z1 :lis. i: is ;Zis: ?.s t len. as i. :?jl It. Zn?.: Z_- E".~ 

:- .rri:: Zir Isrrirlire: :-— I :■: :_t_ :Z :-_t. ZZt; — tIt in :. 
ii _ l::: i: mizZ. It Ztst— tZ Ai"; .Z-j — -:~ ei:^::-: :•: 

1. Z_tIt i:i: ":■:•.: ;zzr.z :r Z_t Z.~ Z: m__ '. tth :: _ ri : : 



1. It 1? plainly stated that it was not even given to their 
:::_t: ; Z1-_:t . :"_ ;.. :: — : - ::~tI :Z:ht :: Z_i: 5t ~ Z: :.\zit :: 
of E . nd to their children forever throughout their genera- 

tions. 

3. Xo Gentiles could be held responsible for a law that was 
never given to them. This accounts for the fact that they were 
never reproved for having disobeyed the law of the Sabbath. 

4. The penalties of the law could only be removed by the 
authority which enacted them. God gave them, and he alone 
could remove them. Hence^ as long as the law remained, even 
r::-i±L* : sZZn? :n Zlt S .'" ."";.:"_ iv.:: \ t rvjiislrii ~i:Z l-.nZ. 

It Is left for us to see in the further discussion of the subject, 
how the penalties of that law were removed by the law being 
taken out of the wav and nailed to the cross of Chr: : 



SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY? 19 

CHAPTEE IY. 

"WAS THE LAW OF THE SABBATH PERPETUATED IN CHRIST ? 

No one doubts that the Jews were commanded to keep the 
seventh day of the week. But we have not found that any one 
else was required to observe that day. But God has designed 
his people to serve him. Has he directed them to continue to 
keep this law? If so, the whole question is at an end. No 
matter when that law was given, if its Giver intended it to be a 
continuous institution, then, beyond all controversy, it remains 
an eternal fixture. Those who demand that we should keep the 
Sabbath present several arguments on this point, and it is our 
duty to hear them. It will do no one any good to be mistaken 
in any matter like this. And it is certain if they who keep the 
Sabbath are right, most other persons are wrong. 

1. It is claimed that the ten commandments are the moral 
code. And as the Sabbath is a part of the decalogue, it was 
therefore a moral commandment, or a part of the moral law. 

It should be noticed here that our friends have to employ dis- 
tinctions which are never found in the Bible. No inspired man 
ever called the ten commandments a moral law. The reason 
that men now so denominate it is that their theory cannot be 
sustained by simply using Scriptural terms. It is not clear to 
me that they have any definite idea of the meaning of the word 
moral. They seem to mean by the use of that term, anything 
which is right and pure. But in that sense, every feature of the 
law given by Moses was moral. Neither impurity nor injustice 
attaches to anything which God ever commanded men to do. 
And if such were the meaning of the word, there could be no 
reason for applying the term to one portion of the law, more 
than another. Webster's definition of the word is : 

" Kelating to duty or obligation ; pertaining to those inten- 
tions and actions of which right and wrong, virtue and vice, are 
predicated, or to the rules by which such intentions and actions 
ought to be directed ; relating to the practice, manners, or con- 
duct of men as social beings in relation to each other, as 
respects right and wrong, so far as they are properly subject to 
rules." 



.20 SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY? 

This shows that the word moral refers to man's duty toward 
Tiis fellow ; that all its demands spring out of the relation which 
men sustain toward each other. Hence moral, is that which is 
right in the nature of things, in this respect, for justice between 
uian and man can never change. But the Sabbath has no 
feature of the moral thought in it. It is not right in the nature 
of things to keep the seventh day any more than to observe the 
first, second, third, or any other day of the week. Kor does it 
regulate any duty of man toward his fellow, more than any 
feature of judicial or ritual procedure. It was right only 
because God required it. It was right just to the extent that he 
commanded it, and beyond that limit, there is no more authority 
for it, than for any of the mummeries and rites of the apostasy. 
It was given to Israel as a test by which God should prove them, 
whether they would keep his commandments or not. There are 
six moral enactments in the Decalogue, but the Sabbath is not 
one of them. 

2. It is claimed that ice have the example of Christ and the 
apostles for keeping the Sabbath. 

Yery certainly Christ and the disciples kept the Sabbath 
-during the time that it was binding upon the people of Israel. 
Christ did not come to destroy the law but to fulfill it. This, 
however, was not truer of the Sabbath or the ten commandments 
than of any other portion of the law. Every "jot and tittle " of 
it was regarded as sacred by him. If this proves that the Sab- 
bath is now binding, it proves that all of the law is binding, for 
Tie treated it all alike. Hence we know that the argument 
■proves nothing. "What was sacred during the life of Christ was 
done away in his death. 

We find the apostles meeting in the synagogues on the Sabbath 
day. But that they observed it as a sacred day is no where 
stated. Adventists now meet on the first day of the week, not 
because they regard the day as a sacred day, but because .they 
can have an audience to hear them on that day. For the same 
reason the apostles met in the synagogues on the Sabbath. Paul 
. went a thousand miles to attend a Pentecost. But that does not 
bind that feast upon Christians. James reveals the fact that 
many believers were yet zealous in keeping the law of Moses. 
Does .that iact make those services binding upon us, when we 



SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY? 21 

are told by inspiration that we are freed from the law by the 
body of Christ ? Suppose that we shall find Christians who 
had been Jews were slow to learn that they were not under law y 
but under grace, will that bind the law upon us ? Paul took and 
circumcised Timothy, because of the Jews which were in those 
quarters ; will that make it necessary for us to be circumcised ? 
It took a number of years before even the apostles knew that 
the Gentiles were to have the gospel preached to them. Will 
that in any way interfere with our authority to carry to them 
the word of life ? The Holy Spirit was given to those men to- 
guide them into all truth. But all needed knowledge did not 
come in a day. It was years in being given and in being 
established with signs' following. And yet, even though the 
minds of disciples had to open gradually to the whole truth, 
there is no recorded instance of their meeting on the Sabbath 
after the day of Pentecost. There were Judaizers who taught 
that they must keep the law, but they never had any consider- 
able following. And when we come to a completed revelation 
we learn that we are not under the law in any respect what- 
ever. That while the law had served a valuable purpose as 
a school-master to bring us to Christ that we might be jus- 
tified by faith, yet, faith having come, we are no longer under 
the school-master. 

3. But it is claimed that Jesus bound upon the disciples this 
institution. 

If this is true, then there is an end of all controversy respect- 
ing the matter. Where and when did he do this ? Show this, 
and we will keep the seventh day, not because it is of the 
Decalogue, but because it is of Christ. We must have the state- 
ment of Christ however. Where is it ? They say that it is to 
be found in Matt. 24 : 20. They were to pray that their flight 
should not be in the winter, nor on the Sabbath day ; and as this . 
referred to the destruction of Jerusalem, it would be about forty 
years after the death of Christ ; hence he makes keeping the 
Sabbath a matter of prayer, forty years after the inauguration 
of his church. 

As much reliance is placed upon this passage, I will quote it in 
full. Matt. 24 : 17-21 : " Let him which is on the house-top not 
come down to take anything out of his house ; neither let him 



oo 



SABBATH C B LORD 5 DAY ^ 



that is in the field return back to take his clothes. And woe 
unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in 
those days. But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, 
neither on the Sabbath day: for then shall be great tribulation. 
such as icas not from the beginning of the world to this time, no, 
nor ever shall be." 

Wiry this is ever quoted by Adventists to show that the Sab- 
bath would be sacred in the year seventy is not easily seen. As 
they argue that all penalties are removed in case of absolute 
necessity, there would be nothing wrong in their fleeing on that 
day. And as for any tradition concerning a Sabbath day's 
journey, they do not suppose that Christ ever attached any 
importance to it. Since, then, there would be no wrong in 
fleeing on the Sabbath day. if necessity should require it, there 
would be nothing in it that would, in any way, interfere with 
their flight out of Jerusalem. Hence they have already 
destroyed their argument on this Scripture. 

There were a number of things which they were to avoid. 
(1) Coming down from the housetop to take anything out of the 
house. (2) Must not return from the field to take his clothes. 
(3) Woe unto them that are with child ; (4] and to them that give 
suck. (5) Pray that your flight be not in the winter ; (6) Xor 
on the Sabbath day. "Would it be religiously or morally wrong 
to do any one of these things ? The Adventist finds no sin in 
anything but fleeing on the Sabbath. He accounts for all the 
other inhibitions on the ground of inconvenience, or necessity. 
It is only the Sabbath that was surrounded by religious author- 
ity. There was just as much prohibition on fleeing in the 
whiter as on the Sabbath day. But while, to them, it proves 
that the Sabbath would be regarded as sacred, it does not have 
that meaning concerning the winter. This shows that they can 
find in the passage just what they wish to find. It means in- 
convenience in five cases out of the six. but in the sixth it must 
mean the sacredness of the day. Certainly Jesus knew it would 
be difficult for them to flee on the Sabbath day. The customs 
and rules of the people, whatever might be in the minds of the 
disciples respecting it, would make it almost impossible for 
them so escape from the doomed city on that day. Their fellow 
Jews would suspect them and apprehend them as traitors. 



SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY? 23 

Hence, while this command of the Savior cannot be accounted 
for upon the hypothesis of the sacredness of the day, it is easily 
understood in the light of the others, convenience : and neces- 
sity. 

4. Paul is said to bind upon them this law in his letter to the 
saints in Borne. See Eom. 3 : 31 : " Do we then make void the 
law through faith ? God forbid : yea, we establish the law." 

There are two questions to be settled in determining the 
meaning of this passage. (1) What is meant by the word law? 
and (2) what is meant by "we establish the law " ? 

Of course Adventists understand the term law here to refer 
to the ten commandments, to the exclusion of all the rest. 
For, with them, it will not do to have the rest of the law bound 
upon Christians. Though nothing has been said about the 
Decalogue in the connection, yet it must have that meaning, 
forsooth, it must. 

Those who will be at the pains of reading this letter from the 
beginning up to this text will find that Paul was trying to con- 
vince them that the gospel was the only power by which men 
could be saved. To do this he had shown (1) that all men were 
lost, and therefore were in need of salvation. (2) That they 
could not be saved by the law. (3) But that they could be saved 
through the gospel without the deeds of the law. Now what 
law is established in this way ? Let me read the 28th, 29th and 
30th verses : " Therefore we conclude that a man is justified 
by faith without the deeds of the law. Is he the God of the 
Jews only ? Is he not also the God of the'Gentiles ? Yes, of 
the Gentiles also. Seeing it is one God which shall justify the 
circumcision by faith, and the un circumcision through faith." 

Now it will be seen by every reader that the same law that 
was established by the gospel, was that law by which they could 
not be saved ; without the deeds of which they might be saved. 

(2) But now the question recurs : In what sense was that 
law established ? Does Paul mean to say that a law by which 
no man could be saved, and that without performing its deeds 
they might be saved, had been bound upon them as a rule of 
life ? Such a thought is perfectly unreasonable. You know 
that Paul never said any thing of the kind. Hence, in estab- 
lishing this law he has not the remotest idea of binding it upon 



24 SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY? 

them as a rule of life. But what does lie mean by the remark ? 

In proving that men were in need of salvation, Paul had to 
show the Jew, especially that he was a sinner. In the second 
place he had to malie him see that he could not be saved by the 
law. These he did by appealing to their records, declaring that 
they related to those who were under the law in particular; 
hence, that the Jew as well as the Gentile was lost and in need 
of salvation. Therefore it was as a witness to the condition of 
the people that the law was established. 

But I am told that very respectable commentators regard the 
law here referred to as the moral law, taught in the Old Testa- 
ment. This, however, does not make it true. And if it did it 
would not furnish any aid or comfort to Adventism, since we 
have seen that the Sabbath would not belong to the last ; 
being a positive and not a moral commandment. But it is 
not possible to accept the common version and regard the 
law here mentioned as simply those eternal principles which a 
man must do or not be just before God, for we are to be justi- 
fied without the deeds of this law. No, it is as a witness that 
the law is confirmed by the establishment of this Kemedial 
system, by which alone it was possible for men to be saved. 
The law was given as a whole, and for a definite purpose, of 
teaching and governing that people till the Christ should come. 
To have caused it to fail of that purpose would have been to 
destroy the law, but to cause it to answer that purpose, by 
bringing in that salvation for which it prepared the people, 
was to fulfill it. Hence, to fulfill, to establish, or confirm, the 
law was the work of Christ in giving the gospel to the world, 
by which the world could be saved. The law and instruction 
of the pedagogue is established by the higher teacher, when 
his lessons and rules are declared to have been right. But no 
one thinks that this leaves the student under the old school- 
master. If you yet have any doubt of the subject, return and 
read the third chapter of the Koman letter, beginning at the 
ninth verse. Then, after quoting freely from some of the 
prophets and the Psalms, he says, verse 19 : " Xow we know 
that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are 
under the law : that every mouth may be stopped, and all the 
world may become guilty before God." 



SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY? 25 

There is nothing unusual in this use of the word law. Many 
times different parts of the Old Testament are called law. 
Both prophecy and history are so denominated. 

5. It is said that Paul has plainly declared to the Hebrews that 
a Sabbath remains to the people of God ; and that as there never 
was but one Sabbath given to men, to be kept by them, it fol- 
lows that he intended them to understand that they were yet to 
observe the seventh day of the week as it was given at Sinai. 

According to the new Revision, in Heb. 4 : 9, we should read : 

" There remaineth therefore a Sabbath rest for the people of 
God." 

Let us read the whole passage from the first verse : u Let us 
fear therefore, lest haply, a promise being left of entering into 
His rest, any one of you should seem to have come short of it. 
For indeed we have had good tidings preached unto us, even 
also as they: but the word of hearing did not profit them, 
because they were not united by faith with them that heard. 
For we which have believed do enter into that rest; even as he 
hath said, 

As I sware in my wrath, 
They shall not enter into my rest : 
although the works were finished from the foundation of the 
world. For he hath said somewhere of the seventh day on this 
wise, And God rested on the seventh day from all his works ; 
and in this place again, 

They shall not enter into my rest. 
Seeing therefore it remaineth that some should enter thereinto, 
and they to whom the good tidings were before preached failed 
to enter in because of disobedience, he again defineth a certain 
day, saying in David, after so long a time, To-day, as it hath 
been before said, 

To-day if ye shall hear his voice, 
Harden not your hearts. 
For if Joshua had given them rest, he would not have spoken 
afterward of another day. There remaineth therefore a Sabbath 
rest for the people of God. For he that is entered into his rest 
hath himself also rested from his works, as God did from his. 
Let us therefore give diligence to enter into that rest, that no 
man fall after the same example of disobedience."— Verses 1-11. 



26 SABBATH OR LORD'S DAT? 

That this language can have no reference to the weekly Sab- 
bath is evident from the following reasons : 

(1) This rest was a promise made to them. — v. 1, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11. 

(2) It had been promised to Israel. — v. 2. The Sabbath had 
been commanded of them, but never promised. Commands and 
promises are very different. 

(3) They had the Sabbath, but they did not have this rest. 

(4) Neither did Joshua give them this rest. Yet they had, 
and kept the Sabbath while he was with them. 

(5) As they kept the seventh day, speaking in David of 
another day, renders it impossible that this rest can refer to the 
Sabbath which they already had. That day at its best could 
only be a type of the rest here promised. And like all the types 
and shadows of the law, disappeared when the Xew Institu- 
tion was ushered in. 

6. In the new earth state, they tell us, there will be the Sabbath. 
To prove this they quote Is. 66 : 23. 

Let us turn and read the connection that we may understand 
the subject before the mind of the prophet. See verses 20-23 : 

"And they shall bring all your brethren for an offering unto 
the Lord out of all nations, upon horses, and in chariots, and in 
litters, and upon mules, and upon swift beasts, to my holy 
mountain Jerusalem, saith the Lord, as the children of Israel 
bring an offering in a clean vessel into the house of the Lord. 
And I will also take of them for priests and for Levites, saith 
the Lord. For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I 
will make, shall remain before me, saith the Lord, so shall your 
seed and your name remain. And it shall come to pass, that 
from one new moon to another, and from one Sabbath to an- 
other, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith the Lord. 1 ' 

It is assumed that this new earth state has reference to the 
Christian dispensation, and hence that in it the Sabbath shall be 
as prominent an institution as it was under the law of Moses. 

It will be noticed, however, by every one who reads to under- 
stand the meaning of the Scripture, that if this text gives any 
assurance of the continuance of the Sabbath, it as certainly per- 
petuates the " new moons." The new moon is used in the sense 
that it is in the law of Moses. Upon the use of this phraseology 



SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY? 27 

let the reader turn and read Num. 10 : 10 ; 28 : 2 ; 1 Chron. 23 : 31 ; 
2 Chron. 2 : 4; Is. 1 : 13 ; Ez. 45 : 17 ; Hos. 2 : 11. 

As we know that the " new moons " are not to be observed in 
the kingdom of Christ, we know that these Sabbaths here spoken 
of do not refer to that period, or the expression is only a figure 
to indicate that the habit of worship will be general. 

7. A seventh argument in favor of the Sabbath is made by 
repeating the word commandment, and always referring it to the 
Decalogue. The average Advent lecturer hangs his chart on the 
wall, and every time he can find the word command or com- 
mandment, he points to the chart, as if to impress it upon the 
minds of the hearers that they are being spoken of. With them, 
for a man to sin he must absolutely violate law, and that he 
cannot do where there is no law. Hence, because Adam sinned, 
he must have violated the ten commandments. They can think 
of no law but that of the Decalogue. So I suppose as the angels 
sinned and kept not their first estate, they must have had the 
ten commandments up in heaven, Sabbath and all, a long time 
before the world was created, or anything done that was to be 
memorialized by that institution. This is the extreme of folly 
to which such a theory will drive even good men. 

Turn to Matt. 5 : 27; 7 : 26, and get a fair view of the manner in 
which such terms are employed in the New Testament. Christ 
first says that " you have heard that it hath been said of old 
time," " But I say unto you." And after repeating this a good 
many times, he pronounces a blessing upon those who "hear 
these sayings of mine and do them." 

This is the meaning in Eev. 22 : 14 : " Blessed are they that do 
his commandments." They were recognized as being under the 
authority of Christ, the King of kings and Lord of lords. So in 
the 26th verse of 2nd chapter, "And he that overcometh and 
keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over 
the nations." The same thought is found in the third chapter 
of this book (7-11), in keeping my word, " the word of my 
patience." In Matt. 10:40, Jesus says: "He that receiveth 
you receiveth me ; and he that receiveth me, receiveth him that 
sent me." If we would receive the Father, we must receive the 
Son, and if we would receive the Son we must receive those 
whom the Son has sent into the world. 



28 SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY ? 

This shows plainly, that the only authority in religion recog- 
nized on the earth, is that of the Christ. 

Matthew 28 : 18-20 : "And Jesus came and spake unto them, 
saying, all power is given unto me in heaven and earth. Go ye 
therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of 
the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost : teaching 
them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you : 
and lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of the world." 

The only things which the apostles had any commission to 
teach the disciples to keep, were the things he had commanded 
them to teach. They were not the commandments of Moses 
nor of the Decalogue, but the things which Christ had com- 
manded. 

John 14 : 21-23 : " He that hath my commandments, and keep- 
eth them, he it is that loveth me : and he that loveth me shall be 
loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest 

myself to him Jesus answered and said unto him, 

If a man love me he will keep my words, and my Father will 
love him, and we will come unto him, and will make our abode 
with him." Verses 15 and 16 of this chapter has the same 
thought : u If ye love me, keep my commandments, and I will 
pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that 
he may abide with you forever." Kead also John 15:10-14; 
Acts 17 : 30, 31 ; 1 John 3 : 22-24 ; 1 Cor. 2:1,2; Rev. 6 : 9 ; 12 : 17 ; 
14 : 12. 

These are a fair sample of the New Testament use of the word 
commandment. They show that the salvation of the world 
depends not on keeping the commands of the law, but by hear- 
ing what Jesus says and doing what he has commanded. 

True the Master has required us to observe many of the 
things that may be found in the law of Moses ; even the golden 
rule, he says, w T as taken from the Law and the Prophets. But 
they are before us as matters of authority not because they were 
in the law of Moses or in the Decalogue, but because they were 
commanded by the Lord Jesus Christ. If he had commanded us 
to keep the Sabbath, then we should have done so, but since he 
did not, we are perfectly free from any obligation to that insti- 
tution. 



SABBATH OR LORD'S PAY? 29 

CHAPTER Y. 

IS THE DECALOGUE YET BIDDING ? 

After it has been made to appear that there is no direct proof 
of the binding authority of the Sabbath, the friends of that 
institution undertake to sustain it in this indirect way. Of 
course, if the Decalogue is binding upon Christians, and we 
know the Sabbath to have been a part of it, then we must be 
under law to God to keep it. 

1. It is first said that any other position than this frees the 
religious world from all moral obligation. If we are not under 
that law, then we may bear false witness, steal, commit adul- 
tery, kill, dishonor our parents, covet, etc., etc. That being 
free from this law, we would be at liberty to commit all the 
things which it forbade. 

This always seemed to me a strange thing, that any one 
could be found who would have no more regard for logic. The 
only question is, does the New Testament condemn these 
things ? If it does, then no Christian is at liberty to do them. 
And every one at all acquainted with that volume knows that 
each one of these crimes is condemned by the Master and by 
his apostles with greater clearness and force than they were in 
the law given at Sinai. Jesus not only taught the other nine 
commandments, but he gave to them features which they never 
had before. For the sake of illustration, let us turn to Matt. 
5 : 27-32, and see how he treats the question of adultery : " Ye 
have heard that it was said," etc., "but I say unto you, that 
whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath committed 
adultery already with her in his heart." Then he shows them 
that whatever would lead them into such lust, they • must put^ 
away from them. Not only so, but he who marries a woman 
not properly divorced, or divorced for any other cause than 
her companion's unfaithfulness, commits adultery. 

Again, read verses 33-37 of this same chapter, on the subject 
of profanity. " Ye have heard that it hath been said by them 

of old time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself But I 

say to you." Then follow directions, showing to them that 



30 SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY ? 

many were guilty of profanity who never suspected it by read- 
ing the law. 

Read what he has said on killing, in verses 21-26 : " Ye have 
heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill. 
.... But I say to you, that whosoever is angry with his 
brother without cause shall be in danger of the judgment." 
And the apostle John tells us that he who hates his brother is a 
murderer. 

If you want to see the Master's way of condemning idolatry 
or presenting the first commandment, read Matt. 4 : 10 : John 
17 : 3 ; and if you would have a sample of the way in which the ■ 
apostles condemned this sin, read Acts 14 : 8-15 ; Eph. 4:6; 
Rev. 4: 10, 11. 

The second command is sustained in Acts 15 : 28, 29 ; Eom. 
8:3, 4; I. John 5 : 20, 21 ; I. Thess. 1 : 9. 

Profanity, the third thing prohibited in the Decalogue, is 
condemned in Matt. 5 : 33-37, and in James 5 : 12. 

In Matt. 19 : 18, 19, Jesus sustains five commandments, in 
the following -order — 6, 7 8, 9, 5. In Rom. 13 : 9, Paul presents 
five commandments in this order — 7, 6, 8, 9, 10. 

While, therefore, the authors of the jSTew Testament gave but 
little if any heed to the order in which they occur in the Deca- 
logue, they teach nine out of the ten of these commandments. 
But while they teach and thus bind these nine upon us, they do 
not do so because they were in that institution, but because 
they were right. 

jso man is able to mention any sin which is not condemned in 
the aSTew Testament. 

2. It is affirmed that James teaches Christians to be in obedience 
to the Decalogue, and calls it the Royal Law. 

The language referred to is f ound in James 2 : 8-13. But it is 
Y,ery far from teaching what they affirm it to teach. Let us 
read it : 

"If ye fulfil the royal law according to the Scripture, Thou 
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, thou shalt do well : but if ye 
have respect to persons, ye commit sin, and are convinced of 
the law as transgressors. Por whosoever shall keep the whole 
law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all. For he that 
said, Do not commit adultery, said also, Do not kill. Now if 



SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY ? 31 

thou commit no adultery, yet if thou kill, thou art become a 
transgressor of the law. So speak ye, and so do, as they that 
shall be judged by the law of liberty. For he shall have judg- 
ment without mercy, that hath showed no mercy ; and mercy 
rejoiceth against judgment." 

Now we find no such thing in this passage as that which they 
affirm. When James speaks of the royal law, or the perfect 
law of liberty, he mentions only those things which Christ had 
endorsed and bound upon the disciples. And especially, " Love 
thy neighbor as thyself," is not in the Decalogue, and yet he 
gives it as the royal law, which if we fulfill we shall do well. 
And if we offend in any one feature of it — love to our neighbor 
— we are guilty. So now, though we are under a system in 
which mercy rejoices against judgment, and are therefore to be 
judged by the perfect law of liberty, yet we must so live as God 
has indicated in giving to us this great law of love. 

No one doubts that this royal law is the perfect law of liberty 
by which we are to be judged. Hence to know certainly what 
is meant by it, we have only to stop and inquire as to the law 
under which we shall be judged. A few texts of Scripture may 
therefore assist in determining this matter. 

John 5: 22: "The Father has committed all judgment unto 
the Son." 

Acts 17 :31 : " God has appointed a day in the which he will 
judge the world in righteousness, by that man whom he hath 
ordained. ... Of this he has given assurance unto all men 
in that he hath raised him up again from the dead." 

Eomans 2 : 16 : " When God shall judge the secrets of men's 
hearts by my gospel" — that is, the gospel which he had preached 
and was even then writing to them. 

2 Timothy 4:1: Christ shall " judge the quick and the dead 
at his appearing and kingdom." 

Hebrews 10 : 30 : " The Lord shall judge his people." 

1 Peter 1 : 17 : This judgment will be by the Father, and yet 
as we have learned already it is to be accomplished by the Son. 

All through the book of Eevelation Christ is represented as 
the judge. 

From Heb. 10 : 28, 29, we learn that those who live under the 
light of the New Institution shall be judged by it, and if those 



32 SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY? 

who disobeyed the " Old Law, died without mercy under two or 
three witnesses, there will be still a sorer punishment awarded 
to those who shall have trampled under foot the Son of God, and 
counted the blood of the covenant wherewith he was sanctified 
an unholy thing, and thus done despite to the Spirit of grace." 
The teaching of the whole of the New Testament on this sub- 
ject is that those who lived under the law shall be judged by the 
law, and that those who lived without law, are to be judged 
according to the light which they had. But those who live under 
the JSTew Testament shall be judged by it. Hence we know that 
the perfect law of liberty is the New Testament. 

3. Such texts as speak of the knowledge of sin coming by the law, 
are eagerly seized upon as affording some aid and comfort for the 
doctrine of Adventism. 

The mere fact that an apostle mentions the law, is by them 
taken as proof that the law was then in existence as a binding 
force in the minds of these inspired men. When Paul says : " I 
had not known sin but by the law, " he speaks of his early 
condition as a son of Jewish parents. Hence, like all other 
persons who were trained and educated under the law, it was 
from that source that he had his early training concerning right 
and wrong. But what this may have to do in proving that the 
law yet remains as a rule by which Christians should live, can 
only be seen by some one who is bound to find proof of his 
doctrine and knows of no other place to look for it. "We know 
that the law of Christ condemns every sin which men can 
commit ; that it is much more thorough than the law of Moses 
ever was, in this respect. Hence we know that no man has to 
go to the Old Institution to learn what sin is. Certainly Paul 
— as an apostle— did not have to go to that law to become 
acquainted with sin. One who was inspired would be under 
no such obligation. In the days of Paul, the law of Moses was 
known to those to whom he addressed his epistles, and there 
were judaizing teachers who were trying to make them believe 
that they must keep that law. Hence Paul referred to it as 
an instrument which was known. But he nowhere taught that 
Christians were under obligations to keep it. 

4. It is sometimes maintained that the long continuance promised 
to the law, precludes the possibility of its removal. Moses says 



SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY ? S3 

that " secret things belong unto the Lord, but his revealed will 
belongs unto us and to our children forever, that we may do all 
the words of this law. " 

But this forever concerns the rite of circumcision and sacri- 
fice as much as the ten commandments. And, therefore, if 
their application of this and kindred passages be correct, the 
whole institution is bound upon us. This is true in all those 
passages they refer to with this supposed proof in it. Nay, 
more, it would prove that their children would live forever. 
But if this expression shall be understood to mean descendants, 
then how do they find that the law is the common property of 
all the nations? 

The truth is, that the same, or even stronger terms are used 
concerning circumcision alone. It was to be a mark between 
God and that people forever. Does this mean that circum- 
cision is bound upon all people for all time? To ask the 
question, is to receive from every one a negative answer. 

5. It is unreasonable, they tell us, that God should have given a 
law to man, and then afterwards become ashamed of that law and 
torn it down. 

And yet if I ask one of these men to be circumcised, he 
refuses. But why refuse? Was not God the author of circum- 
cision? I ask him to offer two rams and a bullock in order that 
he may be consecrated to the priesthood, but he says, no 
indeed. J3ut why so? Did not God give that law? 

But he says that all the judiciary and ritual were done away. 
Where, then, is that argument? It was founded on the fact 
that God had given that law and, therefore, it must remain 
forever. But we have a large number of laws from God which 
he says has been done away. Since then, he knows that God 
may have given law to last but for a given time and to accom- 
plish a given purpose, the wonderful argument is gone. 

0. The Decalogue was written on tables of stone, by the finger of 
God. 

But what has that to do with its perpetuity? Was not any 
other law uttered by Jehovah, either directly, or indirectly, of 
equal authority? Are the ten commandments any more the 
law of God after they were written on tables of stone than 
when uttered by God from the summit of Mt. Sinai? What is 
3 



34 SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY ? 

there in the fact that the Decalogue was written on tables of 
stone by the finger of God that makes it more his law than 
anything else which he commanded that people? 

They say that there were two laws, one from Moses and the 
other from God. Every time they can find the word Moses to 
any part of the ancient revelation, then that is of Moses, but 
the other refers to the ten commandments. Moses is the 
author of one of these, while the other is God's law. They 
claim that the law of Moses was done away, but the law of God 
remains forever. 

This makes Moses a better law-giver than God himself. The 
lawyer that tempted the Master, wished to know which was the 
great commandment of the law. Jesus told him that it was to 
love the Lord with all his heart and soul and mind, and to love 
his neighbor as himself. JSTeither of these is to be found in the 
Decalogue and yet they were chief. That is not all, a man 
might observe every one of the ten, and not keep either one of 
these. Thus, in their mad haste, they will do away with the 
very principles which are eternal, simply to make room for a 
hobby about keeping a certain day ! 

Upon the basis which they urge, for two laws, it would be 
perfectly easy to find that there are two Gods. They find that 
there are different things said about the law, therefore there 
must be two laws. Just like it would be to find that because 
God is spoken of as our Father, and also as a fierce 1km, as a 
man of war, therefore there must be two Gods. Christ sa} r s, 
I came not to judge the world. And then again 'he says, that 
God hath committed all judgment to the Son. Their logic will 
compel us to suppose from these statements that there are two 
Christs. The whole blunder comes from having a hobby which 
finds no other means of support than by a scrap system, that 
snatches texts out of their connection simply to sustain a 
theory. In this way any doctrine may be sustained. Any 
lawyer would be disbarred from the practice of law if he 
persisted in such a use of our statute. 

? I want here to make a quotation from Alexander Campbell. 
I do this for two reasons, (1) Mr. Campbell expresses our views 
very clearly, and (2) Advent preachers are in the habit of 
paying that Mr. Campbell knew that the seventh day was the 



SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY ? 35 

day to keep ; and toward the close of his life, indicated that it 
should be done. While there could be nothing more false than 
this, still there are many persons who are imposed upon by 
their statements. 

I quote from Lectures on the Pentateuch, p. 271, 272 : 

" There remains another objection to this division of the law. 
It sets itself in opposition to the skill of an apostle, and ulti- 
mately deters us from speaking of the ten precepts as he did. 
Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, denominated the 
ten precepts, the ministration Qf condemnation and of death. 
2 Cor. 3 : 7, 14. This we call the moral law. Whether he or we 
are to be esteemed the most able ministers of Christ, it remains 
for you, my friends, to say. Paul, having called the ten 
precepts the ministration of death, next affirmed that it was to 
be ' done away,' and that it ' was done away. ' JSTow, the calling 
the ten precepts ' the moral law, ' is not only a violation of the 
use of the word ; is not only inconsistent in itself, and contra- 
dictory to truth ; but greatly obscures the doctrine taught by 
the apostle in the third chapter of 2 Corinthians, and in similar 
passages, so as to render it almost, if not altogether, unin- 
telligible to us. " 

I quote again from page 286 : " ' Sin,' says the apostle, ' shall 
not have dominion over you ; for ye are not under the law, but 
under grace.' In the sixth and seventh chapters to the Eomans, 
the apostle taught them that they were not under the law but 
under grace; that they were freed from it— 'dead to it'— 
'delivered from it.' In the eighth chapter, first verse, he 
draws the above conclusion. What a pity that modern teachers 
should have added to, and clogged the words of inspiration by 
such unauthorized sentences as the following : ' Ye are not 
under the law as a covenant of works, but as a rule of life.' 
Whoever read one word of ' the covenant of works ' in the 
Bible, or of the Jewish law being a rule of life to the disciples 
of Christ ? Of these you hear no more from the Bible than of 
the ' Solemn League ' or of * St. Giles' day.' " 

Again, from page 288 : " But query : Is the Law of Moses a 
rule of life to Christians ? An advocate of the popular doctrine 
replies, 'Not all of it.' Query again: What part of it ? 'The 
ten commandments.' Are these a rule of life to Christians V 



36 SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY? 

' Yes.' Should not, then, Christians sanctify the seventh day ? 
'jSTo.' Why so? 'Because Christ has not enjoined it.' Oh! 
then, the law, or ten commandments, is not a rule of life to 
Christians any further than it is enjoined by Christ ; so that in 
reading the precepts in Moses' words, or hearing him utter 
them, does not oblige us to observe them — it is only what Christ 
says we must observe. So that an advocate for the popular doc- 
trine, when closely pressed, can not maintain his ground." 

There is no greater mistake than to suppose that a part of the 
law was left binding, as a law, while the rest of it was taken 
away. Their division of it, is purely fanciful. The Bible knows 
nothing about it. Jesus treated the ten commandments just as 
he did the rest of the law ; it had served its purpose as a consti- 
tution of a national religion. The government which was built 
upon it was both political and religious. And as a whole sys- 
tem, the law had served its purpose in preparing the people for 
the higher lessons of the Great Teacher. 

7. But they sometimes ask, why would God take away the ten 
commandments in order to get rid of one? Wliy not blot out the 
one and leave the other nine standing f 

Whatever may be the impression such a question may make 
on the mind of a Bible reader, we must treat it gravely, for they 
all ask it, supposing evidently that it has some element of 
strength. Again we might ask if God removed all the law but 
the ten commandments ? To which they are bound to answer 
yes. We ask again if many of the things now in the Christian 
Institution, were not in the law of Moses ? Again they say yes. 
Then why were these things taken away ? Why were they not 
left standing, seeing they must be in the ]^ew Covenant as well 
as in the Old ? From this it will appear that they are just as 
much in need of showing why God has first removed and then 
re-enacted as we are. Here is the simple truth in the premises : 
God has taught men as they have been capable of receiving 
instruction. He has also made requirements of them as they 
had more light and more responsibility. Many things in the 
Patriarchal system was put into Judaism. That fact, however, 
did not leave the Jew under the Patriarchal religion, nor under 
any part of it as having appeared there. He gave them a new 
law. Yet not new in all its forms and principles ; and yet they 



SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY? 87 

were bound only to observe these things because they were in 
the law of Moses, and not because they had been given to the 
Patriarchs. 

So it was in the establishment of the covenant of Christ, God 
gave a law as perfectly new, as if there had never been a law 
given since the foundation of the world. But in this law of 
faith, this perfect law of liberty, it pleased him to give us many 
things which had been in the Patriarchal and Jewish systems, 
and they are now binding upon us, not because they were there, 
but because they are here ; not because they were of the fathers 
or of Moses, but because they are of Christ. 

Before our states came into the union as states, they had 
forms of territorial government. "When they were admitted as 
states, they came in with a constitution on which could be based 
a code for the government of the people. In that code there 
have been many things which had previously been in the terri- 
torial code. And yet the law is as wholly independent of the 
territorial law as if no such law had ever existed. So it was 
with the law of Moses, it served its purpose, and passed away, to 
make room for a universal religion. As Paul says : " He took 
away the first that he might establish the second.*' — Heb. 10 : 9. 

8. An eighth argument by the friends of the Sabbath is that the 
Decalogue was declared by the Lord to be perfect, and that God said 
of the rest of the law that it was not good. 

In the first place, God never said that the Decalogue was per- 
fect. It is said of the Law of the Lord, that it was perfect, con- 
verting the soul (Ps. 19 : 7). But it would be the law of love, not 
found in the Decalogue, that would convert the soul. As to the 
perfection of that law, Jesus shows very clearly that it was not. 
He added to it in the very things which he retained. It was 
perfect, however, for the work which it was to perform. It was 
. only given as a pedagogue to lead that people during the days of 
their minority. 

We should not be surprised to hear an infidel quote Ez. 20 : 25, 
to prove that God had purposely injured his people whom he had 
pledged himself to protect and save. But when any class of 
professed believers make the same use of it, we are ready to 
ask: "Where is thy faith?" But I will quote the text: 

" I lifted up mine hand unto them also in the wilderness, that 



38 SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY? 

I would scatter them among the heathen, and disperse them 
through the countries ; because they had not executed my judg- 
ments, but had despised my statutes, and had polluted my sab- 
baths, and their eyes were after their fathers' idols. Wherefore 
I gave them also statutes that were not good, and judgments 
whereby they should not live ; and I polluted them in their own 
gifts, in that they caused to pass through the fire all that openeth 
the womb, that I might make them desolate to the end that they 
might know that I am the Lord."— Ez. 20 : 23-26. 

Of course this law can have nothing to do with the law given 
at Mt. Sinai, for it was after that they had violated the very law 
that was there given. Indeed it was after that they had intro- 
duced those gross forms of idolatry, such as burning their chil- 
dren, in the service of their heathen deities. It was many years 
after they had come into the promised land that they did such 
things as are here named. Hence it follows that God simply 
permitted them to receive the reward of their own doings that 
they might learn the results. And through the nations to which 
he permitted them to be sold in bondage, they received those 
laws which were not good. 

In this again is seen the usual weakness of the system which 
compels its defenders into the work of scrapping the Scriptures 
and using the word of God for its sound and not for its sense. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE LAW OF WHICH THE SABBATH WAS A PART WAS DO]STE 
AWAY IK CHRIST. 

I. My first witness is Jeremiah 31 : 31-34 : " Behold the days 
come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the 
house of Israel and with the house of Judah : not according to 
the covenant that I made with their fathers, in the day that I 
took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt ; 
which my covenant they break, although I was an husband unto 
them saith the Lord : but this shall be the covenant that I will 
make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord : 



SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY ? 39 

I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their 
hearts ; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. And 
they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man 
his brother, saying, Know the Lord : for they shall all know me. 
from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the 
Lord : for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their 
sin no more." 

Now when we read Heb. 8 : 6-13, we have Paul quoting this 
and applying it to the covenant of Christ. He shows by the 
quotation that the covenant made with the fathers was old when 
Jeremiah wrote this language ; not only that it was old, but that 
it was ready to vanish away. Hence, according to the promise 
of God, it had vanished away, and a new covenant had come to 
take its place. Between the covenant made by Christ and that 
made with the fathers at Mount Sinai, there are several dis- 
tinctions. 

(1) That was old and this is new. (2) This is not according 
to that. (3) That law was written on tables of stone and on 
papyri, but this is put into the hearts of the people. (4) In that 
covenant there were many who did not know the Lord, but in 
this they all know him, from the least to the greatest. (5) lhat 
was national but this is to be universal, and to be constituted of 
those who have first heard and learned of the Lord. (6) In this 
covenant sins once forgiven are remembered no more ; but in 
that, there was a remembrance of sins once every year. 

But they tell us that this covenant made with the fathers was 
the ritual and judicial law, and not the law of the ten command- 
ments. This, however, is only assumed. God never divided the 
law, nor made any such distinctions in it as they do. 

Again they say that the covenant here spoken of was " made," 
and that the covenant of the ten commandments was a covenant 
that was " commanded." This is a distinction without a differ- 
ence. All covenants that have been given by the Lord, have 
been commanded. When God gave the seed of Abraham the 
covenant of circumcision, he gave it in the form of the impera- 
tive. So it was with all the features of all the covenants which 
he has ever made with his creatures. On one side of the con- 
tract, God has made certain promises, and on the other, he has 
required certain duties. Then it has been left to men to say if 



40 SABRATH OK LORD'S DAT? 

they would accept of the conditions or not. Hence, all their 
talk about covenants '"made"'' and covenants ''commanded" 
darkens counsel by multiplying words. 

Exodus 34 : 10, 11 : "And he said, Behold. I make a covenant : 
before all thy people I will do marvels, such as have not been 
done in all the earth, nor in any nation : and all the people 
among which thou art shall see the work of the Lord : for it is a 
terrible thing that I will do with thee. Observe thou that which 
I command thee this day."' 

This is the usual form : God makes his promises to them, on 
the one hand, and commands their obedience to his will on the 
other. 

Read the 27th and 28th verses of this chapter and we will find 
the very word " made" 1 employed in reference to the ten com- 
mandments: "And the Lord said unto Moses, "Write these 
words : for after the tenor of these words I have made a cove- 
nant with thee and with Israel. And he was there with the 
Lord forty days and forty nights ; he did neither eat bread nor 
drink water. And he wrote upon the tables the words of the 
covenant, the ten commandments.*' « 

Here the ten commandments are said especially to be the cov- 
enant which God "made" with Moses and with Israel. We 
have already seen in Deut. 4:8; 5 : 3-15, that this very covenant 
of ten commandments was included in the contract which God 
made with his people. "Made" is the word which God himself 
selected by which to indicate the giving of the ten command- 
ments. 

Still further, it is evident that the Decalogue is not supposed 
to be absent in this reference of Jeremiah, for he puts in con- 
trast or antithesis, the writing of the new covenant in the 
hearts of the people, and the writing of the old covenant in some 
other way. This is so much like the reference to the same 
subject in Paul's second letter to the church at Corinth, in 
which the antithetical writing was said to have been done on 
tables of stone, that it is most natural to give it that meaning 
here. In every way, therefore, our first witness stands secure. 
And he leaves us without doubt concerning the fact that the 
law, as an entirety, was to be taken away in Christ, and that it 
i is taken away when he was crucified. 



SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY ? 41 

II. Paul, in his letter to the Hebrews, furnishes the testimony 
which we next introduce : 

Hebrews 7 : 11, 12 : "If therefore perfection were by the 
Levitical priesthood, (for under it the people received the law,) 
what further need was there that another priest should arise 
after the order of Melchizedek, and not be called after the order 
of Aaron ? For the priesthood being changed, there is made of 
necessity a change also of the law." 

Of course the defenders of the Sabbath feel that they have 
done enough when they have denied that the law here referred 
to includes the ten commandments. But this denial is utterly 
without reason. There are no evidences to be found in the 
whole epistle that the apostle thought of such a separation of 
the law as that which they make in order to sustain their theory. 
He shows that the whole system has been changed, and that a 
change in one respect made the change in every other, an abso- 
lute necessity. 

Exodus 24 : 4-8 : "And Moses wrote all the words of the Lord, 
and rose up early in the morning, and builded an altar under the 
hill, and twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel. 
And he sent young men of the children of Israel, which offered 
burnt offerings, and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen unto the 
Lord. And Moses took half of the blood, and put it in basins ; 
and half of the blood he sprinkled on the altar. And he took 
the book of the covenant, and read in the audience of the people : 
and they said, All that the Lord hath said will we do and be 
obedient. And Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the 
people, and said, Behold the blood of the covenant, which the 
Lord hath made with you concerning all these words." 

In this law there was the ten commandments and an amplifi- 
cation of them. To see just what this roll contained, we should 
turn and read from the beginning of the 20th chapter. This dis- 
course contained the teaching of God to that people as a funda- 
mental law, or a constitution for them in their national organi- 
zation, and was what Moses wrote in a book and enjoined upon 
them. 

Now we turn to Heb. 9 : 15-19 : "And for this cause he is the 
Mediator of the New Testament, that by means of death, for the 
redemption of the transgressions that were under the First Tes- 



42 SABBATH OB LOBD'S DAY ? 

tament (covenant), they which are called might receive the 
promise of eternal inheritance. For where a testament is, there 
must also of necessity be the death of the testator (testament 
sacrifice). For a testament is of force after men are dead: 
otherwise it hath no strength at all while the testator liveth. 
TThereupon neither the First Testament was dedicated without 
blood. For when Moses had spoken every precept to all the 
people according to the law, he took the blood of calves and of 
goats, with water, and scarlet wool, and hyssop, and sprinkled 
both the book and all the people, saying, This is the blood of the 
testament which God hath enjoined unto you." 

Here Paul can have reference only to that law spoken of in 
Ex. 24. Hence he has now very clearly before him the First and 
the Second Testaments : The one given by Moses, and the Xew 
Covenant — of the Messiah. This First was the ten command- 
ments and a proper elaboration, showing their bearing upon all 
the details of life. But now what is said to have been done with 
this old covenant, this First Testament ? Read right along till 
you reach the 9th verse of the 10th chapter, where he shows that 
Christ became the sum of all divine authority, for whose cove- 
nant the first was removed. This is what is said : 

" Then said he : Lo, I come to do thy will, O God. He taketh 
away the first, that he may establish the second.*' 

The only first and second of which the apostle has spoken in 
this whole connection, are the two testaments, that given 
through Moses, containing the Decalogue, and that given by the 
Christ. Hence, with these facts clearly before us, when Paul 
says, "He taketh away the first, that he may establish the 
second,'' he means, for there is nothing else that he can mean, 
that he took away that old institution, Decalogue and all, that he 
might establish the Xew Covenant, the covenant of Christ. 

III. My third witness is Paul in his letter to the Ephesians. 
Chapter 2 : 14, 15 : " For he is our peace, who hath made both 
one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between 
us ; having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of 
commandments contained in ordinances ; for to make in himself 
of twain one new man, so making peace.*' 

Here, as in his letter to the Hebrews, Paul shows that all that 
held that old national organization together and made it dis- 



SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY? 43 

tinctive, was removed, that in Christ, both Jews and Gentiles 
might be united in one body, in which peace should obtain. 

IV. A fourth witness is the testimony of Paul to the brethren in 
Oalatia. 

In chapter two and verse 19, he says : " Eor I through the law 
am dead to the law, that I might live unto God." 

Galatians 3 : 16-25 : " Now to Abraham and to his seed were 
the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many ; 
but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ. And this I say, 
that the covenant, that was confirmed before of God in Christ, 
the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot 
disannul, that it should make the promise of none effect. For 
if the inheritance be of the law, it js no more of promise : but 
God gave it to Abraham by promise. Wherefore then serveth 
the law ? It was added because of transgressions, till the seed 
should come to whom the promise was made ; and it was ordain- 
ed by angels in the hand of a mediator. Now a mediator is not 
a mediator of one, but God is one. Is the law then against the 
promises of God ? God forbid : for if there had been a law given 
which could have given life, verily righteousness should have 
been by the law. But the Scripture hath concluded all under 
sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to 
them that believe. But before faith came, we were kept under 
the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be 
revealed. Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us 
unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But since that 
faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster." 

Now if it is possible for human speech to contain the thought, 
this language clearly announces the fact, that the law had 
served its purpose and had stepped aside. 

In chapter five and 4th verse, he says : " Christ is become of 
no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law ; ye 
are fallen from grace." 

Adventists satisfy themselves by saying that the ceremonial 
law is here meant. No doubt that it is included, but it is not all 
that is referred to in the language. The righteousness of the 
law speaketh on this wise : They that do these things shall live 
by them. It was not therefore alone in the atonement of the 
law that they were told not to trust, but in the deeds of the law. 



44 SABBATH OB LOBD ? S DAY ? 

Hence, the law as a whole, is said to have served as a school- 
master, and, having fulfilled the appointment, he was taken out 
of the way to make room for the law of Christ. 

But as the Galatians were peculiarly troubled with Judaizing 
teachers, Paul gave a great deal of space in this letter to this 
subject, that they might know they were not under the law 
that was given their fathers at Mount Sinai, but that they were 
under law to Christ. But I will conclude this testimony by one 
more quotation from chapter four and verses 21-31 : 

" Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear 
the law ? For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, the one 
by a bondmaid, the other by a free woman. But he who was of 
the bondwoman was born after the flesh ; but he of the free 
woman was by promise. Which things are an allegory: for 
these are the two covenants ; the one from the Mount Sinai, 
which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar. For this Agar is 
Mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now 
is, and is in bondage with her children. But Jerusalem which 
is above is free, which is the mother of us all. For it is written, 
Eejoice, thou barren that bearest not ; break forth and cry, thou 
that travailest not; for the desolate hath many more children 
than she which hath a husband. Now we, brethren, as Isaac 
was, are the children of promise. But as then he that was born 
after the flesh, persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, 
even so it is now. Nevertheless what saith the Scripture ? Cast 
out the bondwoman and her son : for the son of the bondwoman 
shall not be heir with the son of the free woman. So then, 
brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the 
free.-' 

In this, as in the most the author has said in this epistle and 
in other places, he makes no difference in the law, but puts all 
that was in the Sinaitic covenant into one system and represents 
it by Hagar, and then puts the whole system of redemption in 
Christ in the other, and represents it by Sarah. And then he 
says that the bondwoman was to be cast out for she and her son 
should not be heir with the free woman and her son. Hence, 
those disciples who were disposed to mix Judaism and Chris- 
tianity were wrong ; these two covenants could not live together. 



SABUATH OR LORD'S DAY ? 45 

"V. PauVs indifference to the law, is our fifth witness. 

1 Cor. 9 : 20, 21 : "And unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that 
I might gain the Jews ; to them that are under the law, as under 
the law, that J might gain them that are under the law ; to them 
that are without the law, as without the law, (being not without 
law to God, but under the law to Christ), that I might gain them 
that are without law." 

From this it is certain that if Paul was not a hypocrite, he was 
perfectly indifferent as to keeping the law of the Old Testament. 
He regarded doing these things as innocent enough, that he 
could conform to the regulations and prejudices of any commu- 
nity, either to keep these things or let them alone. As he did in 
the case of Timothy, in circumcising him because of the Jews in 
those quarters, so he regarded the whole question. 

The only law he recognized was the law of Christ. Through 
his law alone he was under law to God. No Adventist could 
speak thus of himself. Nor would any one of them ever cite 
Paul as having made any such a statement as that. It shows 
that Paul could not have been a Sabbatarian. If some keeper of 
the Sabbath had been serving as Paul's emanuensis he would 
have said, "Not so, brother Paul : you should say that you are 
without law, except that you are under the Decalogue, as well 
as the commandments of Jesus." 

VI. Our sixth and last argument on the removal of the law, is 
founded on the opinion of the apostles and elders and the whole 
church at Jerusalem, in the council reported in Acts, 15th chapter. 

There were Judaizing teachers who taught the disciples that 
Gentiles could not be saved unless they would be circumcised 
and keep the law of Moses. They went even as far as to Antioch 
teaching this doctrine. Paul and others withstood them, and 
finally it was carried up to Jerusalem to the apostles and elders. 
And, after a full discussion, and the induction of the facts of 
revelation on the subject, they reached the unanimous opinion 
reported in Acts 15 : 22-81 : 

" Then pleased it the apostles and elders, with the whole 
church, to send chosen men of their own company to Antioch, 
with Paul and Barnabas ; namely, Judas surnamed Barsabas, 
and Silas, chief men among the brethren : And wrote letters by 
them after this manner, The apostles and elders, and brethren, 



46 SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY? 

send greeting unto the brethren which are of the Gentiles in 
Antioch, and Syria, and Cilicia : Forasmuch as we have heard, 
that certain which went out from us have troubled you with 
words, subverting your souls, saying, Ye must be circumcised, 
and keep the law : to whom we gave no such commandment : It 
seemed good unto us, being assembled with one accord, to send 
chosen men unto you, with our beloved Barnabas and Paul; 
Men that have hazarded their lives for the name of our Lord 
Jesus Christ. Yie have sent therefore Judas and Silas, who 
shall also tell you the same things by mouth. For it seemed 
good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you no greater 
burdea than these necessary things ; that ye abstain from meats 
offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and 
from fornication : from which if ye keep yourselves, ye shall do 
well. Fare ye well. So when they were dismissed, they came to 
Antioch : and when they had gathered the multitude together, 
they delivered the epistle : Which when they had read, they 
rejoiced for the consolation." 

A supreme court decision on any disputed point of law could 
not be clearer and more satisfactory than this. They recognized 
only the law of Christ upon them. Even the burdens that seem 
to have any features of the law in them relate to what Advent- 
ists call the ceremonial law. And it is as evident as it can be 
that there is not a Sabbatarian in the whole land who would 
have agreed with that council if he had been present. He would 
have said: "Brethren, this is all wrong; while we are freed 
from the ceremonial law by the body of Christ, we remain under 
the ten commandments, and any decision which will not recog- 
nize that fact is heresy ; not only so, but it will ruin the world, 
for unless men keep the Sabbath they cannot be saved." 



SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY? 47 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE CONCLUSION OF PART FIRST I THE LAW CONTAINING THE 

SABBATH HAYING PASSED AWAY, THE SABBATH ITSELF 

HAS NO MORE CLAIM UPON CHRISTIANS THAN ANY 

OTHER FEATURE OF THE LAW GIYEN 

TO ISRAEL AT MT. SINAI. 

It is evident to every one, that if the law was done which con- 
tained the Sabbath, the Sabbath went with it, and, unless it was 
re-enacted by the Savior, is no more a law by which Christians 
should be governed than the law of circumcision, which was 
given alone to the seed of Abraham, and to those bought with 
their money. Hence it seems proper to continue the evidence 
upon the question in hand, not because the Scriptures already 
quoted are insufficient, but that we may add to them a few other 
statements, exhibiting the fact that in at least half of the episto- 
lary communications, this doctrine of modern Sabbatarianism 
was directly opposed by inspiration. 

VII. As a seventh testimony on this subject I will quote Bomans 
7 : 1-7. 

" Know ye not, brethren, (for I speak to them who know the 
law,) how that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he 
liveth ? For the woman which hath a husband is bound by the 
law to her husband so long as he liveth ; but if her husband be 
dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband. So then if, 
while her husband liveth, she be married to another man, she 
shall be called an adulteress : but if her husband be dead, she is 
free from that law ; so that she is no adulteress, though she be 
married to another man. Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are 
become dead to the law by the body of Christ ; that ye should be 
married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, 
that we should bring forth fruit unto God. For when we were 
in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the law, did 
work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. But now 
we are delivered from the law, that, being dead wherein we 
were held ; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in 
the oldness of the letter. What shall we say then ? Is the law 



48 SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY? 

sin ? God forbid. Xay, I had not known sin, but by the law : 
for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt 
not covet." 

Here the teaching is plain : (1) These brethren had once been 
under the law of Moses — not a part of it, but the whole of it. 
(2) While that law was in existence they were so related to it 
that service to any other system would have been regarded as 
unfaithfulness in a wife to her husband. (3) But as a woman 
is free from the law of her husband by his death, so they 
had been made free from the requirements of the law by the 
body of Christ. (4) Being made free from the law in which 
they had been held, it was right that they should be married to 
Christ, and that in this new relation, they should bring forth 
fruit to God. (5) It is also clear that the law referred to, con- 
tained the Decalogue, for the word covet quoted by Paul, is only 
to be found in that part of the law. Hence, if it is possible for 
a man to teach anything by the use of words, then has Paul 
taught in this passage that we are not under the law of Moses 
in any respect. 

VIII. The eighth witness on this subject will be found by reading 
2 Cor. 3:5-14. 

" But our sufficiency is of God ; who also hath made us able 
ministers of the Xew Testament ; not of the letter, but of the 
Spirit ; for the letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life. But if 
the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones, was 
glorious, so that the children of Israel could not steadfastly 
behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance ; which 
gloi-y was to be done away ; how shall not the ministration of 
the Spirit be rather glorious ? Seeing then that we have such 
hope, we use great plainness of speech : And not as Moses, 
which put a vail over his face, that the children of Israel could 
not steadfastly look to the end of that which is abolished. But 
their minds were blinded : for until this day remaineth the same 
vail untaken away in the reading of the Old Testament ; which 
is done away in Christ." 

It will be noticed that I do not use the word vail in the last 
verse. But as it is wholly unwarranted, there being nothing in 
the original from which it comes, I dismiss it. Our translators 






SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY? 49 

have put it in italic letters denoting that it was supplied ; but 
they should not have put it there at all. 

In this passage it is said distinctly three several times that the 
Old Covenant "was done away" (11), "abolished" (13), and 
"done away in Christ " (14). Now whatever that law was that 
is here put in antithesis with the gospel of Christ, it had been 
done away when Paul wrote this epistle. Further, it is impossi- 
ble that Paul should have had any other writing before his mind 
in indicating this Scripture than the Decalogue. It was the 
ministration of death, written and engraven in stones ; the Old 
Testament, and was done away in Christ. 

A part of this Old Institution was the Sabbath day, and went 
with the law of which it was a part, the law having been 
removed it could not have been left standing. I have never 
heard anything like an answer to this argument from the friends 
of the Sabbath. I do not think there is any to be made. Indeed 
if I were directed to write a statement that the law containing 
the Sabbath was removed, I could not make it stronger than 
Paul has in the language just quoted, 

IX. A last witness is taken from PauVs letter to the brethren at 
Colosse; chapter 2 : 13-17. 

"And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of 
of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having for- 
given you all trespasses ; blotting out the handwriting of ordi- 
nances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took 
it out of the way, nailing it to the cross ; and having spoiled 
principalities and powers, he made a show of them openly, 
triumphing over them in it. Let no man therefore judge you in 
meat, or in drink, or in respect of a holy day, or of the new 
moon, or of the Sabbath : Which are a shadow of things to 
come ; but the body is of Christ." 

Here it will be seen that I have chosen to leave off the 
italicised word days. It is known to every reader that words of 
the Common Version found in italic letters are without am 
authority in the Scriptures, and that they have only been put 
into the body of the work because the compilers thought that 
the passage would be better understood by their use. But, as in 
the added vail in the Corinthian letter, they are positively in the 

way of the truth, and therefore better left out, 
4 



50 SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY? 

It is said that the ordinances of this passage belong to the 
ceremonial law and not to the Decalogue, and hence Paul was 
not speaking of the removal of the ten commandments. 

It will be answer enough to this, to say that the word dogma, 
here translated ordinance, occurs five times in the ]STew Testa- 
ment, and in three of them it is rendered decree. — Luke 2:1; 
Acts 16 : 4 ; 17 : 7. The word does not indicate ceremonies any 
more than any other edict of a sovereign. 

Another attempt to explain away the meaning of the passage 
is that the word Sabbath means, not the weekly rest-day, but 
feast days or stated festivals, which belonged to the ceremonial 
law. 

The word, however, rendered holy day (heortes), has just that 
meaning in it and covers all the ground they wish to have the 
Sabbath occupy in the text. It is rendered literally correct in 
the Emphatic Diaglott : " Let no one, therefore, rule you in 
food, or in drink, or in respect of a festival, or of a new moon, 
or of Sabbaths." 

It is therefore as plain as anything can be, that the word Sab- 
bath does not refer to any of the Jewish feast days for they had 
already been spoken of. And there was nothing else that the 
writer could have referred to but the Sabbath of the Decalogue. 

A kind of last resort is to claim that the word sabbatoon is 
plural, and hence it must be rendered Sabbaths or Sabbath days, 
and therefore it cannot relate to the weekly Sabbath. 

We have already seen that there were no other days that it 
could have meant, as they were presented in the other words of 
the text, and there is no reason to suppose that the Sabbatical 
year or the jubilee be intended. Hence there was nothing 
else to which reference could have been made. 

As for the word Sabbath being the plural, it signifies nothing, 
since the day occurred over and over again, and might, there- 
fore, be spoken of in the plural number with great propriety. 

Still further, it is known to every one who reads the Greek of 
the ]STew Testament, that the third declension plural— as in the 
]ease in hand — is used interchangeably with the second declen- 
sion singular. And that it is therefore many times rightly ren- 
dered by a noun in the singular number. I will refer to a few 



SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY? 51 

occurrences of the word in question, that the reader may see 
just how it is constantly used : 

(1) Matt. 12 : 1 : " Jesus went on the Sabbath day through the 
corn." 

(2) Verse 11 : "And if it fall into a pit on the Sabbath day." 

(3) "In the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the 
first (day) of the week." Here the word week is from sabbatoon, 
neutral, plural, third declension, the same as the word Sabbath. 

(4) Mark 1:21: "On the Sabbath day he entered into the 
synagogue and taught." 

(5) Mark 11 : 23 : " He went through the corn fields on the 
Sabbath day." 

(6) Verse 24 : " Why do they on the Sabbath day that which 
is not lawful ? " 

(7) Mark 3:4: Is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath day, or 
to do evil?" 

(8) Mark 16 : 2 : "And very early in the morning of the first 
(day) of the week." 

(9) Luke 4 : 16 : " He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath 
day and stood up for to read." 

(10) Luke 13 : 10 : "And he was teaching in one of the syna- 
gogues on the Sabbath." 

(11) Luke 24:1: "Now upon the first (day) of the week." 

(12) John 20:1: " The first (day) of the week. 1 ' 

(13) Verse 19: "Then the same day at evening, being the 
first (day) of the week." 

(14) Acts 20 : 7 : "And upon the first (day) of the week." 

(15) 1 Cor. 16 : 2 : " Upon the first (day) of the week." 
From the foregoing induction, it is as certain as it can be, 

that there is no sufficient reason for using the word days in Col. 
11 : 16, or for demanding that it shall have a plural rendering. 
Many of the parallel passages of those we cited are second 
declension singular, and those of the third declension plural, in 
every case refer to the weekly Sabbath, except those cases in 
which it is preceded by the adjective first, where it is always 
rendered week; the word day being employed to fill the ellipsis. 
From all that is now before us in respect to this passage we are 
compelled to say : 
1. Paul did not use the word Sabbath in the sense of feast 



52 SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY? 

days, for he had just spoken of them in the most appropriate 
terms possible, and would not repeat it in the same sentence. 

2. He speaks of the weskly Sabbath, there being nothing else 
to which he could have spoken. 

3. He classes it with other features of the law which had 
been removed by the cross of Christ. 

4. Christians being free from the law with all its demands, 
are not to be held accountable for the keeping of any of it. As 
we shall not be judged by a law under which we do not live, we 
are not to yield to the whims of those who would bring us again 
into bondage in such matters. 

Here I feel disposed to dismiss the case so far as the keeping 
of the Sabbath is concerned. When Paul says, let no man judge 
you in respect of the Sabbath, I stand upon that liberty, and do 
not propose that any man shall entangle me in that service 
which was taken out of the way and nailed to the cross. 

There have been many strange doctrines preached in the 
name of Christianity, but how any man with ordinary judgment, 
and any faith at all in the inspiration of the apostles, can claim 
that we must keep the seventh day of the week, by virtue of the 
law that was given at Mt. Sinai, when nearly half of the argu- 
mentative portion of the epistles was leveled directly against 
that very falsehood, is exceedingly strange. 

In the minds of those who feel that we must have a "thou 
shalt " for all acts of devotion, will feel that we have removed 
one of the great props by which the world shall be made to 
respect the service of God. Their fear is wholly unnecessary. 
We are not going to be injured in any way in following the 
Scriptures. And we know that if they teach anything, they 
teach that we are free from the law ; that we are not under the 
law ; that the law was done away in Christ ; that it only served 
as a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ that Ave might be justi- 
fied by faith, but that as faith has come, we are no longer under 
the old schoolmaster. Nay, more, the conclusion is drawn for 
us; these things being so, this law having been taken away, we 
are not to be judged by anything which it contained : new 
moons, feast days, or the Sabbath. 

Still it will be asked if the Sabbath to the Jew was not a 
foundation for the Lord's day to be observed by the Christian ? 



SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY? 53 

While it may be true that it is best for men to take one day out 
of every seven for rest and devotion, we will see in the second 
proposition that the two days are very unlike in many particu- 
lars. They were for different purposes and kept for different 
reasons. The one called to mind the creation of the world 
and the delivery of Israel from Egypt, while the other recalls 
the redemption that is in Christ Jesus and his promise to come 
a second time without a sin offering to salvation. 



PART SECOND. 



THE LORD'S DAY. 

CHAPTEE I. 

THE SOURCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 

"We have now seen that the New Testament gives no author- 
ity for the observance of the seventh day of the week as a day 
of rest, any more than it warrants us in keeping any other day. 
Hence, to observe it as a day of rest, will be simply as keeping 
any other form of tradition or of the commandments of men, 
and in the second chapter of Colossians it is so ranked by the 
Apostle Paul. But the question now before us is, shall we 
observe any day? If so, which one of the seven? and how shall 
we be able to determine? 

We have two ways of knowing the will of the Lord : first, 
God has stated directly many things he would have us do ; and 
second, he has presented before us in the lives of his inspired 
servants, examples for us to copy 

In all ages of the church the best minds have ever agreed 
that to live, as did the early churches, under the eye and sanc- 
tion of the apostles, will be pleasing and acceptable to God. 
From which of these sources must we expect intelligence con- 
cerning the day we are to keep? The Sabbatarian, regarding 
himself as under the law of Moses, has trained himself only to 
expect intelligence in a direct command, and to regard nothing 
as sacred which does not come in that way. 

God has taught the world as we teach our children, always 

regarding the age and condition of those to be instructed. 

"When we instruct our children, we proceed as God did in the 

patriarchal times, and in the law of Moses; we state duties 

(54) 



SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY ? 55 

without assigning the reasons for them, simply because those 
we are instructing are incompetent to lay hold of the principles 
that are to guide them in their conduct. But these were 
primary institutions, serving as man's teachers, preparing for 
Christ, the great teacher, under whose instructions we may 
graduate for the heavens. The manner of teaching, therefore, 
that was proper during the days of Moses, cannot be expected 
to be continued in the new Institution. When we have reached 
our majority in Christ, in the new covenant, we are treated as 
though we were competent to learn truth, not only by direct 
statement, but by example become acquainted not only with 
facts, but with principles that shall guide us in the service of 
the Lord. For these higher lessons, God was preparing the 
world during the ages. His provisions and revelations were 
upon the basis of man's necessities. God revealed his will, his 
love, and his power in those systems of relief and blessing 
which were temporal in themselves, but which, in their 
typology, looked to him who is the perfect Law-giver. 

Man's first want was that of knowledge, and to supply that 
want, God sent a prophet, or a line of prophets, all of whom 
were anointed or christed. These were the agents through 
whom the divine will was made known, and this want of man 
supplied. Man's second want was pardon. He knew himself 
to be guilty and, therefore, suffered from a consciousness of 
sins and fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation. 
To relieve man of this weakness, provision was made for 
pardon in an atoning sacrifice offered by a priest, year by year, 
but-this priest, or these priests, must be anointed or christed 
before they could serve. 

Man's third want was a guide, a governor, a protector. When 
the people of Israel asked God to give them a king, the demand 
was a purely human one, and was made from that felt necessity 
of some one to control them and protect them from their 
enemies. But before a king could serve them, he must be 
anointed or christed. So, while God supplied their then present 
wants, he was furnishing instructions concerning the coming- 
One who should, in himself, answer all human necessities, 
being the prophet, the priest and king, teaching, governing and 
saving the world. 



56 SABBATH OK LORD"S DAY ? 

We learn Christ's will not only by what he said, but by what 
he did and the things which he approved. Had he never said 
anything relative to marriage, his presence at the wedding in 
Cana of Galilee, and remaining during the feast, would show his 
approval of that relation. After teaching his apostles for more 
than three years, there were many things that had not been 
told them ; many things which they could not understand ; and 
when he went away, he gave them the promise of another Com- 
forter, another Helper, who should guide them into all truth ; 
who should receive of him and deliver to them, and should 
bring to their knowledge all things whatsoever he had said to 
them. So that in their teaching and in their living they might 
mistake in no respect. What, therefore, these men taught and 
what they did, both directly and indirectly, become to us a 
guide in our Christian service. 

Many things which the Savior taught the apostles were not 
reported in the gospels. Many years after the Lord had 
ascended into the heavens, we hear Paul mention a saying of 
the Master, which was commonly understood by all disciples at 
that time : " It is more blessed to give than to receive." Acts 
20 : 35. This was not only a teaching of the Lord, but it was 
one of those common sayings of his of which every one had 
heard. And yet no report of it had come down to them by 
means of the writings of the evangelists. 

Not only many things were said by the Lord during his 
earthly ministry that found no place in the four gospels, but he 
did many things which were never reported by these writers. 
John supposes that if they had given an itemized account of all 
that he did, that the world would not contain the books. 

Hence, it is evident to any one who wishes to learn of God's 
will concerning us, that we must necessarily wait upon the 
apostles in order that we may know the Lord's will concerning 
the conduct of his disciples. 

They try to find fault with this, sometimes, and urge that a 
covenant must all have been put to record before the covenant- 
sealing act, and that after the sacrifice by which it is sanctified. 
has been made, nothing can be added thereto. In this calcula- 
tion they commit several blunders. I will name them in the 
order in which they occur to me : 



SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY ? 57 

1st. They take for granted that everything in connection with 
the sacrifice of Christ must be in the precise order in which 
they have found covenants and sacrifices at all other times. 
And yet the very first feature of this service is irregular. The 
passover, which had always been regarded as a type of the 
offering of Christ for us, required, first, the slaying of the lamb, 
and after that the covenant meal. This had been the manner 
of ratifying covenants in all the ages, or of renewing them. 
But Jesus ate the passover before he was crucified, indeed, 
before the time for the eating of the passover had come. And 
in the conclusion of that solemn service, he took bread and 
blessed and brake and gave unto them, telling them, "This 
is my body," and then he took the cup, and said, " This is my 
blood of the New Covenant, shed for many, for the remission 
of sins." And yet, at that time, his body had not been bruised, 
nor had his blood been shed. Of course, this is out of the 
order of all covenant making. But when we have the facts 
recorded, and know that this was the order of that New Insti- 
tution, it is better for us to accept it than to reject it because of 
something which we have denominated an irregularity. 

2d. They take it for granted that all the teaching and require- 
ments of a covenant must first be made known before it could 
be ratified by sacrifice or meal. This is a great mistake. The 
covenant of Exodus was ratified by sacrifice and meal when the 
people knew but little of the terms upon which they were to 
have their liberty. They were not aware of the route over 
which they were to travel, of the hunger and thirst which were 
to follow, nor of the law under which they were to live in order 
to inherit the promised land. These features of the covenant 
were to follow. Nor was the Levitical law given when it was 
ratified in covenant. "When Moses took the book and sprinkled 
it, as well as the people, in the solemnization of the covenant 
which God then made with that people, it contained nothing 
but the merest epitome of the law under which they were to 
live and to which they then bound themselves. This covenant 
was forty years in its completion. And yet it was as binding 
on them as if it had been given in one day. 

3d. They urge that everything which Jesus had intended his 
disciples to do, had been taught before his death. And yet he 



58 SABEATH OK LOED"S DAY? 

told them that there were many things which he could not 
teach them then because they could not comprehend them. 
Hence, just as it was in giving the Old Covenant to the Chil- 
dren of Israel, they received the instruction as they became 
competent to understand it. The truth, in both cases, was that 
they bound themselves to whatever God required them to do. 
And yet they did not know all that would be imposed upon 
them. At the time that Christ made and sealed his Covenant 
there was nothing written. It was many years after this when 
the gospels made their appearance. And yet to deny that he 
made a Covenant with his people is to deny the plain statement 
of the word of God. 

4th. And yet. for all we can know to the contrary, every 
feature of the Xew Institution had been given to the apostles 
before Christ suffered on the cross. Still they might need the 
further instruction of the Holy Spirit, to enable them to com- 
prehend it and to teach it infallibly to others. 

Hence, when they object to anything as belonging to the 
Covenant of Christ, except those things which had been clearly 
stated as having been given before, they do so without any 
scriptural reasons whatever. 

This leaves us not only to the direct statements found in the 
gospels, but to the teachings found in the Acts of the Apostles, 
and in the Epistolary communications of these inspired men. 
But much of the teaching found in the Acts of the Apostles is 
in action. I do not mean by this that these men made no mis- 
takes in their conduct. I do not justify Peter in dissembling at 
Antioch, nor do I suppose that Paul and Barnabas were both 
right in their opinions concerning the propriety of taking with 
them John Mark on their proposed second missionary tour. 
What we mean is this, the action of these men, and of the 
churches under their teaching, having the silent approval of 
themselves and co-laborers, is a guide to us. as much as what 
they commanded. 

With those who are something more than mere quibblers, 
who have a hobby to be sustained by mere technicalities, the 
question is. what would God have me to do? And understand- 
ing what inspired men regarded as their duty and the duty of 
the church at that time, we feel that, if we do the same things 



SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY? 59 

now, we shall be doing the will of God. We may put this in the 
form of a syllogism, thus ; (1) Those men did the will of God. 

(2) That will has not been changed from that time to this. 

(3) Therefore, if we do the same things now, we will be doing 
the will of God. 

With this rule before us, we will try to find just what they 
did and taught that we may know just what God would have us 
to do now. If the church under the teaching of the apostles 
kept the Sabbath, that will be sufficient reason why we should 
keep it. If they did not keep it as a sacred day, and if they 
told us that we are free from the law of which it was a part, 
and, therefore, that no man has any right to judge us in any 
matter of this kind, we feel at liberty to follow that teaching. 
We have seen this already. But we are now to see if they 
regarded any day as sacred, and if so, which of the seven. 

It will not be necessary for us to find them saying that the 
first day of the week is a sacred day ; if they so devoted the day 
it is enough. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE VIEW ENTERTAINED BY CHRISTIANS IN GENERAL. 

Adventists generally discard this as evidence. They tell us 
that these views have been wrong, and that the whole question 
must be settled by the word of God and by that alone. " And 
that to insist on any testimony from the religious world, will 
be to lay the foundations for apostasy." By such evidence, they 
say, "we could sustain infant baptism, or sprinkling, instead 
of the immersion which Jesus taught, or any of the forms of 
merely human origin." 

And yet when they can find the religious world blending the 
law and the gospel, and urging their memberships to keep the 
Sabbath, they are not slow to remind us of the fact that they 
hold the same opinion which the great men have always held, 
and, therefore, there is strong reason for regarding their views 



60 SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY? 

in that respect, as being well sustained. With them, it depends 
somewhat upon whose ox is being gored. If I should do the 
same thing with this human testimony which they do, they 
should not grumble. 

It should be remembered, however, that while testimony of 
this kind can serve in no sense to set aside the statements of 
the word of God, or to sustain customs for which nothing was 
ever claimed by way of divine appointment, still, respecting 
those questions in which men have examined the word of God 
and founded their practice on what they have, in this way, come 
to regard as the requirements of heaven; and, especially, in 
those matters where there has been perfect unanimity of senti- 
ment, such views are worthy of the highest respect. 

If our question related to a matter in which religious people 
are to be found keeping a law or a custom under which they 
had been raised, the testimony would certainly amount to but 
very little. All prejudices and customs are in favor. of those 
things with which we have been familiar. Such things might 
continue for centuries, without any one taking the trouble to 
investigate the question in any way. It is easy to retain the 
customs of the past, but very difficult to remove them. Hence, 
in any case where we find a large number of people ceasing 
from any former religious custom, we may be pretty well 
assured of one or two things : either the change is being made 
for convenience's sake, to something which will satisfy con- 
science, and yet is very much more easily practiced, than what 
was formerly done, or they are making the change from con- 
viction of right. 

Concerning the keeping of a day, there would be nothing to 
be gained in the way of ease. It would be as difficult to 
observe the first day of the week as to keep the seventh. 
Indeed, it would be much more difficult. They were surrounded 
by Jews hi the early times, and from these the change comes. 
To act in harmony with their customs would be comparatively 
easy, while to change the custom in this respect would be 
attended with a great deal of annoyance. Nor was this all : 
their own prejudices were in the way. These early Christians 
had been Jews, and would naturally feel inclined to retain as 
much of their old religion as possible. Many of them had the 



SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY ? 61 

idea that the Gentiles had no right to be saved. And even 
when they became convinced that they were to be accepted as 
well as the Jews, they thought that they must be circumcised 
and keep the law of Moses, or they could not be saved. The 
apostles knew better, but they met the prejudice of the whole 
church at this point. Now, for this people to change from the 
seventh to the first day of the week, declares that, in their 
minds, there were sound scriptural reasons for doing so. 

And still further : the religious world has had the prejudice 
of a mistaken interpretation to contend with upon this point 
during all these centuries. 

At a very early period in the history of the church, the desire 
was manifested to accommodate the religion of Christ to the 
tastes and customs of the world. Rather than to offend the 
Jew who was zealous for the law, they were ready to yield to 
his demands, either in practice or in theory. In this way they 
accommodated Christianity to the Gentile world. And many 
of the forms, and ceremonies of the Catholic Church to-day are 
nothing but baptized heathenisms. Also, many other things 
are a mixture of Paganism and Judaism. And, like many of 
the reformatory kings in Israel, who tried to remove idolatry 
without removing the idols or stopping the worship in the high 
places, our reformers have handed down to us a large number 
of customs and doctrines labeled "Christianity" that were 
received from the Mother Church. Because of this desire to 
accommodate the religion of Christ to the wish of the Jews, 
they have entertained the idea that Christians are now keeping 
the law of Moses. In this way they talk and teach of baptism 
in the room of circumcision, and of keeping the Sabbath when 
they are only keeping the first day of the week. But with this 
feeling in the mind that we are under the law, there has been, 
during the ages, all the pleading which has ever been made for 
a scriptural practice, to return to the keeping of the seventh 
day of the week. Certainly nothing has kept them from 
returning to that law in practice as well as in theory, but the 
fact that they could not find that the apostles and early Chris- 
tians did so. 

Then we find that this change has not only taken place, but 
that it has come in opposition to all the prejudices of the 



62 SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY? 

people who made it and of those who have continued it. 

Indeed, we shall hereafter find that zealots for the law kept 
both days. They regarded the seventh day because of the 
decalogue, and observed the first day of the week because of 
the practice of the apostles and the first Christians. 

The Ebionites, as related by Theodoret, held this view and 
kept both days. Dr. Moses Stuart, of Andover, says, referring 
to that statement of Theodoret : " This gives a good historical 
view of the state of things in the early ages of the church. 
The zealots for the law wished the Jewish Sabbath to be 
observed as well as the Lord's day ; for about the latter, there 
appears never to have been any question among any class of 
Christians, so far as I have been able to discover. The early 
Christians, one and all of them, held the first day of the week 
to be sacred." 

Does some one say that even so learned a man as Dr. Stuart 
might have been mistaken? We do not claim infallibility for 
him. And yet to say that he was as familiar with all the 
customs of past ages, and especially with those which related to 
the religion of Christ, as any man whose name is known to the 
reading public, and that he would be as conscientious in stating 
these facts as any to whom reference might be made, is only to 
state truth in a very feeble way. He was a prince of scholars ; 
a man of pains-taking, carefulness and accuracy in all he said 
and wrote. Such testimony must have great weight with those 
who are wishing for light respecting the views and practices of 
Christians from the very first. 

I am not aware that this statement of the Professor has ever 
been seriously questioned by any one. So far as I know, both 
parties accept his statement as being, at least, substantially 
correct. This gives us the assistance of a strong argument ; 
one that is not to be lightly thrown aside. 

We have as many quotations at hand as it would be possible 
to use in a work of reasonable limits, showing that the unani- 
mous opinion of the whole church has been, from the very first, 
that the Lord's day, or the first day of the week, should be 
observed as a sacred day by all Christians. But for the present, 
we want to go a step further, and show the purpose had in view 
in meeting together. It would be too much to say that all dis- 



SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY? 63 

ciples of Jesus have ever been agreed in this purpose, for not 
all have studied the subject. But I shall quote the opinions of 
those who are most entitled to consideration, showing that, in 
their view of the matter, the chief purpose for these meetings 
on the first day of the week was to break bread, or attend to 
the communion. 

William King, Archbishop of Dublin, in a sermon concerning 
the " inventions of men in the worship of God" says : 

" It is manifest that if it be not our own faults, we may have 
an opportunity every Lord's day when we meet together ; and, 
therefore, that church is guilty of laying aside the command, 
whose order and worship doth not require and provide for this 
practice. Christ's command seems to lead us directly to it : 
for, 'Do this in remembrance of me,' implies that Christ was 
to leave them, that they were to meet together after he was 
gone, and that he required them to remember him at their 
meetings whilst he was absent. The very design of our public 
meetings on the Lord's day, not on the Jewish Sabbath, is to 
remember and keep in our minds a sense of what Christ did 
and suffered for us till he come again ; and this we are obliged 
to do, not in such a manner as our own inventions suggest, but 
by such means as Christ himself has prescribed to us, that is, 
by celebrating this holy ordinance. 

"It seems, then, probable, from the very institution of this 
ordinance, that our Savior designed it should be a part of God's 
service, in all the solemn assemblies of Christians, as the pass- 
over was in the assemblies of the Jews. To know, therefore, 
how often Christ requires us to celebrate this feast, we have no 
more to do, but to inquire how often Christ requires us to meet 
together ; that is, at least every Lord's day." 

Dr. Scott, in his commentary on Acts 20 : 7, says : " Breaking 
of bread, or, commemorating the death of Christ in the euchar- 
ist, was one chief end of their assembling ; this ordinance 
seems to have been constantly administered every Lord's day, 
and probably no professed Christians absented themselves from 
it, after they had been admitted into the church ; unless they 
lay under some censure, or had some real hindrance." 

Dr. Mason, in his "Lectures on Frequent Communion," 
Edinburgh edition, says : " Communion every Lord's day was 



64 SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY? 

universal, and was preserved in the Greek church till the 
seventh century ; and such as neglected three weeks together 
were excommunicated." 

John Wesley, in a letter to America, 1784, said : "I, also, 
advise the elders to administer the supper of the Lord on every 
Lord's day." 

In all the ages of the church there have been a large number 
of devout men demanding that the church should return to 
what they denominate the practice of the apostles respecting 
the communion, that of meeting together on every first day of 
the week to remember the Lord's death in that Institution, till 
he shall come again. 

Dr. Barnes makes this note on Acts 20 : 7 : " And upon the 
first day of the week. Showing thus that this day was then 
observed by Christians as holy time. Comp. 1 Cor. 16 : 2 ; 
Kev. 1 : 10. To break bread. Evidently to celebrate the Lord's 
Supper. Comp. chap. 2 : 46. So the Syriac understands it, by 
translating it, ' to break the eucharist ' ; that is the eucharistic 
bread. It is probable that the apostles and early Christians 
celebrated the Lord's Supper on every Lord's day." 

There is so much of candor in this that it is surely entitled to 
consideration. The practice of the church to which Dr. Barnes 
belonged was in the way of this clear acknowledgment. Still 
he makes it, because it seemed to him as the evident teaching 
of the Scriptures on the subject. 

In the Encyclopedia Britannica, under the head of u Eucharist ," 
we have this statement: "With regard to the frequency of 
Holy Communion, although it has been concluded with much 
probability from Acts 2 : 46 that the earliest Christians, in the 
first fervor of their faith, partook of the Eucharist daily, ap- 
pearances are rather in favor of a weekly celebration on the 
Lord's day being the rule in the apostolic and primitive church. 
It was on the ' first day of the week ' that the Christians met 
for breaking bread at Troas (Acts 20 : 7) ; and St. Paul's direc- 
tion to the Corinthian Christians to lay by for the poor on that 
day, may be reasonably associated with the oblations at the 
time of celebration. Pliny tells us that it was on a ' fixed day, 
stato die, the Christians came together for prayer and commun- 
nion,' and, as we have seen, Justin MartjT speaks of Sunday by 






SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY ? 65 

name (hee legomenee heliou hemera) as the day of celebration." 

From chapter fourteen of the " Teaching of the Twelve Apos- 
tles" we have the following, as their instruction respecting the 
communion : 

"And every Lord's day, having gathered yourselves together, 
ye shall break bread and give thanks, having moreover con- 
fessed your transgressions, in order that your sacrifice may be 
pure." 

It is not proper to make the claim that some have made for 
this manuscript, that it was not more than fifty years on this 
side of the Apostle John. We do know, however, that Justin 
taught as plainly as that, at still an earlier day, though he used 
the Koman term " Sunday " instead of Lord's day, as found in 
this writing. But it is safe to say that the manuscript was of 
very early date, and tells very clearly how early Christians 
understood this service. 

We are greatly tempted to give a number of such quotations 
from Christian workers and thinkers during the ages, but we 
must not take the space to do so. Kev. C. H. Spurgeon now 
communes on every recurring Lord's day, and in the minds of 
the great host of Christian thinkers it was the primitive cus- 
tom. And there remains no room for doubt that when the 
religious world shall come to look upon apostolic precedent as a 
proper guide for all Christians in all time, the whole church 
will return to this ancient custom. 



CHAPTER III. 



UNFAIR METHODS OF ADVANCING THE CAUSE OF THE SAB- 
BATH, AND OF OPPOSING THE LORD'S DAY. 

I. Adventists usually take advantage of the desire of the 

people for something new. There are hundreds of Athenians 

yet in the world, who spend their time in nothing else than to 

tell or hear of something new. Such persons are able to find 

that many things which we now know to be true were once 
5 



66 SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY ? 

denied. The conservative forces have many times been in the 
wrong. Hence, they jump to the conclusion that, in all matters 
in which some new theory is opposed, the opposition must 
necessarily be wrong, and the novel doctrine right. About all, 
therefore, necessary to be done to carry any cause in the minds 
of such persons, is to convince them that the doctrine in ques- 
tion is new ; that it is feared and avoided by many who are 
unwilling to accept any change, and they at once accept the 
novel position as being correct. Of course such persons are not 
of much account to them or anybody else ; they will change that 
for something else as soon as the tide shall run some other way. 
They are light clouds having no water, and are, therefore, 
carried about with every wind of doctrine. But they count. 
The piety of this class rarely becomes more than a hobby- 
riding zeal. But there is an evidence of success in the addition 
of numbers. And in the newness of zeal and in the enjoyment 
of the new fellowship, they are willing to be tithed. "While 
they do not sustain the cause in that locality, their contribu- 
tions carry the work into some other community where there 
may be found other people like themselves who are willing to 
assist for a time, and in that way the cause is kept moving. 

II. Advent preachers usually light upon some midefended 
community. They find some place where the sectarianism of 
the times has so divided and weakened the churches that no 
one party is able to have preaching but a small part of the time, 
and this not by the ablest men. These communities are not in 
communication with those who can defend the doctrine of the 
Scriptures respecting this Institution, and they would not be 
able to obtain his service for the want of means. Here the 
Adventists find a good field, and are able to get the people to 
commit themselves in a covenant to keep the Sabbath before 
any defense of the gospel can be had. A discussion, if one 
obtains at all, is usually after they have succeeded in fastening 
the masses to their opinions, when it is not easy to change the 
current after the recent shower. 

I A mistake is generally committed, too, by the friends of the 
truth, in saying : ;; Let them alone, they will come to naught 
themselves." Xo doubt that the storm will pass by, and that a 
calm will follow. But how much timber will be destroyed is 



SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY ? 67 

another question. As the prick of a needle in the spinal 
marrow of the child may make a hunch-back for life, so by 
these views here lodged in the souls of the young of that com- 
munity, their religion is maimed forever. If these men could 
always be met by the proper means at the right time, they 
would never do any lasting damage to any people. But from a 
false policy, a divided Christianity, or from indifference, the 
work of ruin is not checked. 

III. Everything is turned into persecution. They come into 
town and continue a meeting for one or two months, during 
that time they challenge the people in one way or another fifty 
times for an investigation. But if some one proposes to inves- 
tigate, they raise the cry of persecution. They claim to have 
been peaceably preaching what they believe, and that some one 
is disturbing them. They learned this of the Mormons, from 
whom Mrs. White, their Prophetess, learned to have revela- 
tions. This has been their mode of claiming the sympathy, 
and begging the toleration of an injured people. 

IV. Many honest and intelligent people are deceived by the 
statements of history which they have published. I know of 
no work more deserving of censure for unfairness than " The 
History of the Sabbath," by J. N. Andrews. Scraps of state- 
ments are taken out of their legitimate connections, and testi- 
monies wrung from authors who testified nothing in their 
favor. To call such procedure pettifogging, is to apply a term 
entirely too feeble for the expression of the true thought. He 
has not only quoted every erratic statement which could be so 
applied as to favor his theory, but he finds history which other 
men can not find. In the second edition of the work the author 
acknowledges to have quoted from an edition of Neander not 
now in use, and to have used a statement which the historian 
did not put into his revised work. Many Sabbatarians have 
been found in the different ages of the church. Of course 
these can be had to testify in favor of that institution. After 
the year 585, the church of Eome combined the Sabbath with 
the Lord's day, or taught that the Lord's day was given to take 
the place of the Sabbath. Hence, since that time it has been 
common to speak of the Lord's day as the Sabbath. Many 
writers have spoken of the Institution by that term, and Sab- 



68 SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY? 

batarians commonly take advantage of the fact to make it 
appear that the author was testifying to their institution, the 
seventh day. 

Y. It is common, I might say universal, to claim that 
Sunday had no existence till the time of Constantine, or that 
it was never regarded as sacred till that time, and then only by 
virtue of the edict of a king who was a heathen. If you hear a 
lecture from one of them it will be clearly affirmed ; if you read 
a tract, it will be boldly stated, but if you have before you a 
work which is expected to fall into the way of the critical 
world, you will find it only hinted. After the patched work of 
quotations has been furnished, the author will assume such to 
be the purport of what has been produced. As a sample of 
many things which might be cited, I call attention to Mr. 
Andrews on the Sabbath, pp. 346-7 : 

"On the seventh day of March, (321,) Constantine published 
his edict commanding the observance of that ancient festival 
of the heathen, the venerable day of the sun. On the following 
day, March eighth, he issued a second decree in every respect 
worthy of its heathen predecessor. The purport of it was this : 
' That if any royal edifice should be struck by lightning, the 
ancient ceremonies of propitiating the Deity should be prac- 
ticed, and the haruspices should be consulted to learn the mean- 
ing of the awful portent. The haruspices were soothsayers who 
foretold future events by examining the entrails of beasts 
slaughtered in sacrifice to the gods. The statute of the seventh 
of March enjoining the observance of the venerable day of the 
sun, and that of the eighth of the same month commanding the 
consultation of the haruspices, constitute a noble pair of well- 
matched heathen edicts. That Constantine, himself, was a 
heathen at the time these edicts were issued, is shown not only 
by the nature of the edicts themselves, but by the fact that his 
nominal conversion to Christianity is placed by Mosheim two 
years after his Sunday law.' " 

This is the manner of the argument. What is lacking in the 
testimony is to be made up by telling the readers what is the 
sum or the purport of an edict. I have no interest in defending 
Constantine. He exhibited many inconsistencies. He was a 
politician, and, while he came eventually to regard Christianity 



SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY? 69 

as the only religion which could be of any particular value to 
any person, and though we could not say that he had reached 
that conclusion in the year 321, we must say, if we have paid 
any attention to the edict itself, that it was his purpose to set 
Christians at liberty to worship as they preferred. This, how- 
ever, was not all ; he extended the same rights to all his sub- 
jects. As to his requiring any day to be kept as a day of 
heathen worship, there is not a particle of evidence in its favor. 
History can not even be distorted into such a thought. ]STo 
Christian understood it so, and if that had been the idea which 
attached to that edict, Christians would not have submitted. 
They were yet ready to die for their faith in Christ, and would 
not, under any circumstances, have submitted to a heathen 
worship. But instead of that, they regarded it as a release for 
their religion and a restoration of their liberties. 

Nothing more than disgust can be excited for the shallow 
pretensions or utter disregard for truth of a man who will say 
that Constantine wished to favor heathenism by the so-called 
Sunday law of 321. From 313 he had been removing all ob- 
structions to Christian worship, and those who were in slavery 
were released. Those who had lost their lands had them 
restored to them again. He even went so far as to urge hi* 
people to accept of this religion. Hence no man can find an 
easier way of convincing all readers of history of his entire 
unworthiness as an author than to make such statements 
respecting Constantine and his edicts as are made by Mr. 
Andrews. 

In Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, Am. ed., under the 
" Lord's day," I find the following very sensible view of the 
whole matter as it relates to Constantine : 

u 4th. That Constantine then instituted Sunday for the first 
time as a religious day for Christians. 

"The fourth of these statements is absolutely refuted, both 
by the quotations made above from writers of the second and 
third centuries, and by the terms of the edict itself. It is evi- 
dent that Constantine, accepting as facts the existence of the 
Solis Dies, and the reverence paid to it by some one or other, 
does nothing more than make that reverence practically univer- 
sal. It is ' venerabilis ' already. And it is probable that this 



70 SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY? 

most natural interpretation would never have been disturbed, 
had not Sozomen asserted, without warrant from either Justin- 
ian or Theodosian code, that Constantine did for the sixth day 

of the week what the codes assert he did for the first 

" It is a fact, that in the year A. D. 321, in a public edict 
which was to apply to Christians as well as to Pagans, he put 
especial honor upon a day already honored by the former, 
judicially calling it by a name which Christians had long em- 
ployed without scruple, and to which, as it was in ordinary use, 
the Pagans could scarcely object. What he did for it was to 
insist that worldly business, whether by the functionaries of 
the law or by private citizens, should be intermitted during its 
continuance. An exception indeed was made in favor of the 
rural districts, avowedly from the necessity of the case, covert- 
ly, perhaps, to prevent those districts, where Paganism (as the 
word Pagus would intimate) still prevailed extensively, from 
feeling aggrieved by a sudden and stringent change. It need 
only be added here that the readiness with which Christians 
acquiesced in the interdiction of business on the Lord's day, 
affords no small presumption that they had long considered it 
to be a day of rest, and that, so far as circumstances admitted, 
they had made it so long before. 

" Were any other testimony wanting to the existence of 
Sunday as a day of Christian worship at this period, it might 
be supplied by the Council of Xicea, A. D. 325. The fathers 
there and then assembled make no doubt of the obligation of 
that day — do not ordain it— do not defend it. They assume it 
as an existing fact, and only notice it incidentally in order to 
regulate an indifferent matter, the posture of Christian worship 
on it. 

"Richard Baxter has well summed up the history of the 
Lord's day at this point, and his words may not be inaptly 
inserted here : ' That the first Christian emperor, finding all 
Christians in the unanimous possession of the day, should make 
a law (as our kings do) for the due observance of it, and that 
the Christian Council should establish uniformity in the very 
gesture of worship on that day, are strong confirmations of the 
matter of fact, that the churches unanimously agreed in the 
holy use of it, as a separated day even from and in the apostles' 



SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY ? 71 

days.' Richard Baxter on the Divine Appointment of the Lord's 
day, p. £1." 

This is rather a long quotation, but it is so directly to the 
point that it seemed best to give it in its connection. I could 
quote from almost any number of good authors, showing that 
the use made of the edict of Constantine by Mr. Andrews is 
unjust and unreasonable. I do not know of any historian who 
will agree with his use of that edict. It is not only unfair and 
unreasonable, but it shows that the mind of the gentleman is 
greatly warped by his particular views of theology. 

In Blackburn's Church History, page 70, the author says . 

" The edicts of Constantine from 312 to 325 show an ecclesias- 
tical spirit. They refer largely to the building and repair of 
churches, and liberal gifts to them ; the restoration of property 
of Christians, who must be equally just to the Pagans ; mutual 
toleration of religions ; the settlement of religious disputes ; the 
calling of local councils; the exemption of the clergy from 
civil offices and taxes ; the burning of Jews who should assail 
Christians ; the emancipation of slaves ; the general observance 
of Sunday {solis dies) ; restoration of property to the heirs of 
martyrs ; careful provision for the poor ; the release of Chris- 
tians from the mines ; the forbidding of images— even his own 
statue must not be set up in the temples ; severe penalties upon 
heathen diviners and priests who should perform sacrifices in 
private houses, and practice magic ; and the earnest advice that 
all his subjects adopt Christianity." 

Kemark would seem to be unnecessary. It must be evident 
that if Mr. Andrews is right in his use of the edict of Constan- 
tine there is nothing to be gained by reading history. 

Two very distinct views are entertained respecting Con- 
stantine. One is that he was a saint. This comes from the 
services which he rendered the church, and the extravagant 
views of Eusebius of Nicomedia, who baptized him, a short 
time before his death. A truer judgment is, however, gener- 
ally indulged ; that he was an ambitious statesman, who had 
knowledge of the innocence of those Christians who had suf- 
fered severely at the hands of the Pagans, and that he aimed to 
redress them ; that he knew that this religion was for the good 
of the nation, and hence, that in rendering it any real service, 



72 SABRATH OR LORD'S DAY ? 

he would advance his people in the elements of refinement and 
prosperity ; and that in using the solis dies he only employed a 
term which was already in existence, and which was known to 
refer to the first day of the week. That heathens may have 
observed this day, has nothing to do with the edict, nor its pur- 
pose. 

VI. Adventists insinuate that the Lord's day is a creation of 
the Catholic Church ; that it came into existence as many other 
customs of purely human origin. 

That this position is quite antagonistic to the one just men- 
tioned, namely, that it was of heathen origin, does not seem to 
disconcert them in the least. I will cite one quotation as a 
sample of many which might be given. 

Hist. Sab. Andrews, p. 228 : " The Lord's day of the Catholic 
Church can be traced no nearer to John than A. D. 194, or 
perhaps, in strict truth, to A. D. 200, and those who then use 
the name show plainly that they did not believe it to be the 
Lord's day by apostolic appointment. To hide these fatal facts 
by seeming to trace the title back to Ignatius, a disciple of 
John, and thus to identify Sunday with the Lord's day of that 
apostle, a series of remarkable frauds have been committed 
which we have had occasion to examine." 

Now, this is the most remarkable statement that I ever saw 
in a religious book. Indeed, the quotations he has made him- 
self, prove his statement perfectly untrue. I know no way to 
account for such rash utterances but to suppose the man to 
have been exceedingly mad against the first day of the week, 
and, therefore, willing to go to any length to find something or 
make it, that would show the Lord's day in a bad light. 

I think some Catholic priest can be found somewhere who 
will claim that his church changed that day. I think I remem- 
ber having seen that claim set up, and Acts xx : 7, referred to 
as proof. And yet every reader of history knows that from the 
very days of the apostles the first day of the week has been 
observed as a day of worship. It is known, too, that the church 
was quite free from anything that would entitle it to such 
designations as Catholic, (in the sense of Eoman Catholic,) for 
several hundred years. To show how perfectly unreliable Mr. 
A. is concerning facts, and consistency both, I will give the 



SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY? 73 

quotation he makes from Mosheim, and that, too, on the very 
next page to that from which I have quoted already. Let it be 
remembered that Mosheim is writing of the first century, and 
telling of customs which existed before John was dead, indeed, 
before he was cast away upon the Isle of Patmos. 

" All Christians were unanimous in setting apart the first day 
of the week, on which the triumphant Savior rose from the 
dead, for the solemn celebration of public worship. This pious 
custom, which was derived from the example of the church of 
Jerusalem, was founded upon the express appointment of the 
apostles, who consecrated that day to the same sacred purpose, 
and was observed universally throughout the Christian 
churches, as appears from the united testimony of the most 
credible writers." 

Kow what can be said of the consistency, say nothing of the 
veracity, of a man who, with this language staring him in the 
face, can muster the courage to say that the Lord's day (which 
we know refers to the first day of the week, in the language of 
the Catholics) can not be traced nearer to John than A. D. 194. 
When he was writing the statement he knew that the very best 
historical authority which can be found traces that observance 
to the first century, and finds it even before the death of that 
apostle. JSTor is this all, Mr. A. has given the statements of the 
most reliable historians to the effect that the first day of the 
week, or Lord's day, or Sunday, was religiously observed all 
the way from the apostles down to the time he says it 
may first be found. Why, then, he chooses to fly in his own 
face and contradict himself, as well as all reliable history, is a 
most difficult question. Does he mean to discredit history, and 
simply quote those men to show what fools they have made of 
themselves? or does his Judaism really interfere with his sanity? 

VII. Adventists constantly play upon words. Find the an- 
cients observing Lord's day, and so affirming, then it does not 
mean the first day of the week, but the day of the Lord's 
Judgment, or it must mean the Sabbath, which, in the 
Old Testament, was regarded as "My holy day." There 
may be every evidence of the sense in which the author em- 
ployes the term, but that must pass for nothing. To be able 
to quibble out of its evident import seems to be the only aim. 



74 SABBATH OB LOBD'S DAY? 

If Justin Martyr spoke of the first day of the week by the 
term Sunday, then it must coimt for nothing : it is a heathen 
word. If the first day of the week is spoken of as a day of 
Christian gathering, then it was for some other purpose than 
the worship of God. If they are spoken of as meeting on that 
day for the purpose of breaking bread, then it was an accident' 
or a mere incident, and can have nothing to do with giving the 
practice of the people. And when they can find nothing else to 
say, they demand that somewhere it ought to be found that 
the Savior commanded his apostles to observe the first day of 
the week as a sacred day. I presume if this could be found, it 
would be said : " Yes, it was a sacred day, and so are all days 
sacred to the Lord.'' 

If they find anywhere that the word ''festival " has been used 
in connection with the Lord's day or Sunday, then it is proof 
that it was only a day of recreation, and in no sense a day of 
worship. Though it be found that they did act unadvisedly in 
respect of festivities on that day. and some man can be found 
saying that these Sunday festivities were only a human institu- 
tion, it must be found that he means that Sunday is a human 
institution! Though if the language was submitted to any class 
in rhetoric or logic in the country, the unanimous decision 
would be that the author meant to say that it was the unscrip- 
tural use of the day, and not the day itself, that was condemn- 
ed as a human institution, still, as they can clip the quotation 
and retain a jingle of words suitable to their purpose, they are 
willing to sacrifice the evident meaning of the language, that a 
hobby may be sustained. 



SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY? 75 



CHAPTER IY. 

HISTORY SHOWS THAT THE LORD'S DAY, OR FIRST DAY OF 

THE WEEK, HAS BEEN REGARDED AS A SACRED DAY IN 

ALL AGES OF THE CHURCH. 

I begin with a statement of the opinion of the teachings of 
history on this subject, by B. B. Edwards, in his " Encyclopedia 
of Religious Knowledge," published 1858, found on page 1,040 : 

" We are informed by Eusebius that from the beginning the 
Christians assembled on the first day of the week, called by 
them the Lord's day, for the purpose of religious worship, to 
read the Scriptures, to preach and to celebrate the Lord's 
Supper." 

Now, we are not ready to say that the author has misunder- 
stood his reading, nor that Eusebius has been untrue to the 
facts in the case. And unless we may impeach one or the other 
of these witnesses, the question is put to rest with this state- 
ment. 

" Chamber's Encyclopedia " has the following on the subject 
of the Sabbath : 

He has come to the edict of Constantine, and gives us some- 
thing on this side of it : "A new era in the history of the 
Lord's day now commenced ; tendencies toward Sabbatarian- 
ism, or confusion of the Christian with the Jewish Institution 
beginning to manifest themselves. These were slight till the 
end of the 5th century, and are traceable chiefly to the evils of 
legislation." 

"Johnson's Encyclopedia" has this to say on the subject of 
the Sabbath : 

" The resurrection of Christ and his subsequent appearances 
to his disciples till his ascension, and the miraculous descent of 
the Holy Spirit on the first day of the week, led to that being 
set apart for the special religious assemblies of the Christians, 
and for the simple services of their faith. For a time the 
Jewish converts observed both the seventh day, to which the 
name Sabbath continued to be given exclusively, and the first 
day, which came to be called Lord's day. Later, the Apostle 



76 SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY? 

Paul sought to relieve their consciences from the obligations of 

keeping the Sabbath (Rom. 14 : 5 ; Col. 2 16) Within 

a century after the death of the last of the apostles we find the 
observance of the first day of the week, under the name of the 
Lord's day, established as an universal custom of the church, 
according to the unanimous testimony of Barnabas. Ignatius, 
Pliny, Justin Martyr, and Tertullian. It was regarded not as 
a continuation of the Jewish Sabbath (which was denounced 
together with circumcision and other Jewish anti-Christian 
practices), but rather as a substitute for it; and naturally its 
observance was based on the resurrection of Christ rather than 
on the creation rest-day or the Sabbath of the Decalogue." 

As to the origin of the word Sunday, there seems to be no 
settled view, but some things are agreed to universally, that it 
was the first day of the week, and that at an early date it came 
to be used as a synonym for Lord's day. 

With this thought before us we are prepared to hear Mosheim 
as translated by Murdock, Yol. 1, p. 137, say of the practice of 
the second century : " When the Christians celebrated the 
Lord's Supper, which they were accustomed to do chiefly on 
Sundays, they consecrated a part of the bread and wine of the 
oblations by certain prayers pronounced by the president, the 
bishop of the congregation. "' 

Same book, p. 278, sec. 5, Mosheim says : Jt The first day of 
the week, (on which Christians were accustomed to meet for 
the worship of God.) Constantine required, by a special law, to 
be observed more sacredly than before." 

Once more from the same work : Century IT., Part IT.. Chap, 
iv., section 8 : u The Christians assembled for the worship of 
God in private dwelling-houses, in caves, and places where the 
dead were buried. They met on the first day of the week ; and 
here and there also on the seventh day, which was the Jewish 
Sabbath." 

Then again, in Book I., Century I., Part II.. Chap, iv., 
Sec. 4 : " The Christians of this century assembled for the 
worship of God and for the advancement of their own piety on 
the first day of the week, the day on which Christ re-assumed 
his life ; for that this day was set apart for religious worship 
by the apostles themselves, and that, after the manner of the 



# SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY? 77 

church at Jerusalem, it was generally observed, we have 
unexceptionable testimony. Moreover, those congregations 
which either lived intermingled with Jews, or were composed 
in great measure of Jews, were accustomed to observe also 
the seventh day of the week, as a sacred day : for doing 
which the other Christians taxed them with no wrong." 

Now, so far as history is concerned, we have traced the keep- 
ing of the first day of the week, or Sunday, or Lord's day, back 
through the fourth century, the third, the second, and away 
down into the first ; right up to the apostles who were at Jeru- 
salem. Not only so, but we have used their own author, or at 
least the favored translation of Mosheim. 

He finds those Judaizers there just as Paul and Silas did, 
only Mosheim notices those who were less determined in their 
plans and methods of worship. Those of whom Luke speaks 
taught that unless the Gentiles were circumcised and would 
keep the law they could not be saved. But those our historian 
speaks of kept the first day of the week and also the seventh. 
The other Christians only kept the first day of the week. 

It would seem unreasonable that we should quote another line 
of history, for if what we have seen will not convince a man 
that Christians have kept the first day of the week as a sacred 
day in all ages of the church, then to such a man history can 
have but little influence. Still I am disposed to go further and 
let other historians and commentators and critics have their say 
on the subject. I do this for two reasons : first, because these 
witnesses have been badly dealt with, and, secondly, because 
they throw light on the meaning of many Scriptures, th'at are 
not understood by many persons, simply because the manner 
of speech differs from ours. 

J. N. Andrews, Hist. Sabbath, p. 229, 230, says : " Now let 
us read what Neander, the most distinguished of church his- 
torians, says of this apostolic authority for Sunday observance : 
' The festival of Sunday, like all other festivals, was always 
only a human ordinance, and it was far from the intentions of 
the apostles to establish a divine command in this respect ; far 
from them and from the early apostolic church, to transfer the 
laws of the Sabbath to Sunday. Perhaps at the end of the 
second century a false application of this kind had begun to 



78 SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY? 

take place ; for men appear by that time to have considered 
laboring on Sunday as a sin." 

This language Mr. Andrews cites to rebut the testimony of 
Mosheim, whom we have already quoted, showing that the first 
day of the week was observed from the very first as a day of 
worship. Now, while this quotation was left out of Neander 
in its reproduction, I must say that I see nothing damaging 
in it. If the author had before his mind the first day of the 
week, and was trying to show that its observance was not apos- 
tolic, still it would have been simply the opinion of that man 
as against ten thousand men equally critical in exegesis. But 
he had before him a wrong use of that day in establishing a 
feast on that occasion. It was the festival of Sunday that he 
condemned. And that is the same thing that Paul condemn- 
ed in the church at Corinth : not the day on which they met, 
but the festival on that day. The author further shows that 
the early Christians did not regard Sunday as being Sabbath. 
This, again, is certainly correct. 

But Mr. Andrews relieves us of any further trouble about 
the missing quotation. He says : 

"It is true that in re- writing his work he omitted this sen- 
tence. But he inserted nothing of a contrary character, and 
the general tenor of the revised edition is in this place precisely 
the same as in that from which this, out-spoken statement is 
taken." 

And then to prove that JSTeander held the same views in the 
later work he quotes from vol. 1, p. 295, Torrey's translation: 
" Sunday was distinguished as a day of joy, by being exempted 
from fasts, and by the circumstance that prayer was performed 
on this day in a standing and not in a kneeling posture, as 
Christ by his resurrection, has raised up fallen man again to 
heaven." 

Now, what is there in this that condemns Sunday observance V 
The historian only shows that the early Christians met together 
on that day and were glad in view of the resurrection of the 
Lord from the dead. While this may not, in any way, conflict 
with the quotation which is now acknowledged to be missing, it 
would antagonize it very strongly if the meaning of the former 
was that of condemning the Sunday as not apostolic. Hence, 



SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY? 79 

we know that his wonderful quotation, with which he sought to 
make Neander oppose Mosheim, had no such meaning as that 
which he gave it. 

But I am not done yet with Neander. In his " Planting and 
Training of the Christian Church," a work devoted exclusively to 
the first century, page 159, he says : 

" But since we are not authorized to make this assumption, 
unless a church consisted for the most part of those who had 
been Jewish proselytes, we shall be compelled to conclude that 
the religious observances of Sunday occasioned its being con- 
sidered the first day of the week. It is also mentioned in Acts 
20 : 7, that the church at Troas assembled on Sunday and cele- 
brated the Lord's Supper." 

Again, same page : 

"They rejected the Sabbath which the Jewish Christians 
celebrated, in order to avoid the risk of mingling Judaism and 
Christianity, and because another event associated more closely 
another day with their feelings. For, since the sufferings and 
resurrection of Christ appeared as the central point of Christian 
knowledge and practice ; since his resurrection was viewed as 
the foundation of all Christian joy and hope, it was natural 
that the day which was connected with the remembrance of 
this event, should be specially devoted to Christian commun- 
ion." 

Now, if this does not show that Keander was of the opinion 
that the early Christians regarded the first day of the week as a 
sacred day, then language can not be so constructed as to 
present that thought. 

But to turn to the very volume from which Mr. Andrews 
makes his quotation, to show that Neander, in his new work, 
agrees with his distortion of what he claimed to have found in 
a former work, and on the. same page, only a few sentences 
from the one to which Mr. A. refers, we read : (See Vol. I., p, 
295). 

" The opposition to Judaism early led to the special observ- 
ance of Sunday in the place of the Sabbath. The first intima- 
tion of this is in Acts xx : 7, where we find the church assem- 
bled on the first day of the week ; a still later one is in Rev. 
1 : 10, where, by the Lord's day can hardly be understood the 



80 SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY ? 

day of judgment. As the Sabbath was regarded as represent- 
ing Judaism, Sunday was contemplated as a symbol of the new 
life consecrated to the risen Christ and grounded in his resur- 
rection. Simday was distinguished as a day of joy. *' 

With all these facts before me, and knowing that they were 
before Mr. Andrews, it is a strain on my charity to not think 
of him as deliberately falsifying history. "Neander uses the 
three words, Sunday, first day, and Lord's day as expressive of 
the same occasion : they all and severally mean the resurrection 
day, were so regarded by early Christians, and the day was 
kept as a sacred day, a day in which Christians were to meet, 
and engage in communion. Again on page 332 of this same 
volume we have the following : 

"As we have already remarked, celebration of the Lord's 
Supper was still held to constitute an essential part of divine 
worship on every Sunday, as appears from Justin Martyr; 
and the whole church partook of the communion after they 
had joined in the amen of the preceding prayer." 

So much for Xeander. He teaches as positively the opposite 
of what Mr. Andrews represents him as teaching as it would be 
possible for one man to differ from the teaching of another. 

One more specimen of the unfairness of Mr. Andrews. He 
quotes from Tertullian, who wrote towards the close of the 
second century. The first is from Tertullian on Prayer, Chap. 
xxiii. : 

" We, however, ( just as we have received), only on the Lord's 
day of the resurrection ought to guard, not only against kneel- 
ing, but every posture and office of solicitude ; deferring even 
our business, lest we give any place to the devil. Similarly, 
too, in the period of Pentecost ; which period we distinguish 
by the same solemnity of exultation.*' 
jSText he quotes Tertullian on Idolatry, Chap. xiv. : 
" O, better fidelity of the nations to their own sects, which 
claims no solemnity of the Christians for itself. Xot the 
Lord's day, not Pentecost, even if they had known them, would 
they have shared with us ; for they would fear lest they should 
seem to be Christians. We are not apprehensive lest we 
should seem to be heathens. If any indulgence is to be granted 
to the flesh, you have it. I will not say your own days, but 



SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY ? 81 

more too; for the heathens each festive day occurs but once 
annually ; you have a festive day every eighth day." 

Mr. A. then concedes that this festive eighth day was the 
Lord's day just mentioned. Then he quotes again, this time 
from Tertullian's Ad Nationes, Book I., Chap. xiii. : 

" As often as the anniversary comes around, we make offer- 
ings for the dead as birth-day honors. We count fasting or 
kneeling on the Lord's day to be unlawful. We rejoice in the 
same privilege also from Easter to Whitsunday. We feel 
pained should any wine or bread, even though our own, be 
cast upon the ground. At every forward step and movement, 
at every going in and out, when we put on our clothes and 
shoes, when we bathe, when we sit at table, when we light the 
lamps, on couch, on seat, in all the ordinary actions of daily 
life, we trace upon the forehead the sign (of the cross)." 

He closes his quotations from Tertullian by one from Be 
Corona, sections 3,4: 

" If for these and other such rules you insist upon having 
positive Scripture injunction, you will find none. Tradition 
will be held forth to you as the originator of them, custom as 
their strengthener, and faith as their observer. That reason 
will support tradition, and custom and faith, you will either 
yourself perceive, or learn from some one who has." 

Now while Mr. A. cites the references to these garbled ex- 
tracts, he does so by the use of a foot note, indicated by em- 
ploying figures. And he is probably correct in supposing that 
not more than one out of a hundred will notice that his last 
quotation has nothing to do in any way with the subject of the 
Lord's day. There is not a word in the connection from which 
it is taken on that topic. He has made four quotations from 
four different works of that author, on four different subjects, 
and has thrown them together and then remarked upon them 
as if they were so much testimony given respecting the Lord's 
day, or first day of the week. And all to show that Tertullian 
did not regard the Lord's day of any direct divine authority. 

Suppose that I could find some one saying that the early 

Christians kept the seventh day of the week, as did the Jews, 

and regarded themselves as under the law which required its 

observance, and then I find some other work of that same 
6 



82 SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY ? 

author, speaking of some things which they have come to 
practice by tradition and not by direct Scripture command, 
which he says we don't claim divine authority for these things, 
and then argue that my authority confessed that what they did 
was simply from custom, would not every man regard me as a 
falsifier of history ? I would be making the writer say that he 
iad no authority for the Sabbath when he was not talking on 
the subject in any way. And yet that is just what Mr. A. does 
for Tertullian. He says, too, that he has given all that Tertul- 
lian has said on the subject of the Lord's day but one mere 
reference. Well, this is what Tertullian says in so many words: 
" The Lord's day is the holy day of the Christian Church. 
We have nothing to do with the Sabbath. The Lord's day is 
the Christian's solemnity."" 

It is no pleasure to expose the tricks of unworthy men. I am 
ashamed that any man can be found claiming to be a believer in 
Christ with no higher motive before him. He suppresses the 
testimony of the men from whom he pretends to quote ; applies 
words written on one subject to another topic, and then draws 
conclusions that are not even warranted by his patched deliver- 
ances. I will, with this brief notice, dismiss Mr. Andrews, 
Relieving him to be unworthy of the confidence of any reader. 

Let us now hear from Justin Martyr, in his Apology to 
Ajitoninus, page 67, A. D. 1-40. This man had been raised in 
Palestine, and only writes a little on this side of the apostle 
John. He says : 

i ' On the day called Sunday all who live in cities, or in the 
country, gather in one place, and the memoirs of the apostles 
or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits, 
then the president verbally instructs and exhorts to the imita- 
tion of these good things. Then we all rise together and pray ; 
then bread and wine and water are brought and the president 
offers prayers and thanksgiving according to his ability, and the 
people say, amen. There is a distribution to each, and a par- 
taking of that over which thanks have been given, and a portion 
T.3 sent by the deacons to those who are absent. The wealthy 
among us help the needy ; each gives what he thinks fit ; and 
what is collected is laid aside by the president who relieves the 
orphans and the widows, and those who are sick or in want 



SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY? 83 

from any cause, those who are in bonds, and strangers sojourn- 
ing among us ; in a word, he takes care of all who are in need. 
"We meet on Sunday because it is the first day, when God created 
the world, and Jesus Christ rose from the dead." 

We have already seen that Sunday was a common term by 
which to speak of the first day of the week, or Lord's day. Ter- 
tullian and some others call it the "eighth day," that is, the 
next day after the seventh. The reason that Justin here prefers 
the " Sunday " to any other, is that he would be understood by 
the Emperor to whom he addressed the Apology, in so doing, 
whereas if he employed the term Lord's day, he would fail of 
his purpose. 

The language of Pliny, the Governor of Bithynia, to the 
Emperor Trajan, reveals this same custom. I quote from 
Blackburn's History, p. p. 25, 26 : " And this was the account 
which they gave of the nature of the religion they once pro- 
fessed, whether it deserve the name of crime or error : That 
they were accustomed to meet on a stated day, before sunrise, 
and repeat among themselves a hymn to Christ as to a God, and 
to bind themselves as with an oath not to commit any wicked- 
ness, nor to be guilty of theft, robbery, or adultery, never to 
deny a promise or break a pledge ; after which it was their cus- 
tom to separate, and to meet again at a promiscuous, harmless 
meal (doubtless the love feast connected with the Lord's 
Supper)." 

Our author thinks that this letter of Pliny was written about 
the year 112. Most historical critics put it several years sooner. 
At any rate it was but a few years after the death of the apostle 
John. And as we have the united testimony of history and 
Scripture that the disciples did observe the first day of the week, 
Sunday or Lord's day, as they at any time chose to call it, this is 
beyond any reasonable question, the meaning of this stated day-, 
on which they met for the purpose of breaking bread. 

I will now close the historical discussion of this question. We 
have seen that many of the best authorities state as plainly as 
they can, that the early Christians met on the first day of the 
week and give their reasons for doing so, that it was the day on 
which the Lord rose from the dead, and, on that day, the apos- 
tles and those Christians taught by them, met to break 



84 SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY ? 

bread and drink wine, in memory of the bruised body and 
shed blood of the Lord Jesus. We have seen, too, that at an early 
time there were Judaizing teachers trying to bring the disciples 
back again under bondage to the law of Moses. That some of 
these were determined that they would keep the Sabbath, 
although they did not refuse to observe the first day of the week 
as a sacred day, made so by the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. 
Hence there were some who kept both days. But history is as 
clear as it can be that, as they came to understand the nature of 
the Gospel of Christ, they discontinued their devotions to the 
law, as such. And against this, there-is no opposing testimony. 
History cannot be tortured into the support of the seventh day 
of the week. The most that the Advent historian has tried to 
do was to cast some doubt on keeping the Lord's day. And we 
have seen that even this cannot be done, only as history is 
falsified, and made to depose upon subjects and speak language 
that the writers themselves never thought of. 

Usually when history is made to speak on the subject, the 
advocate of seventh-day-ism says : " Well, there is nothing in 
it any way." Now, as we said in the beginning of this part of 
our investigation, we do not regard it as an end to the contro- 
versy, but that it is a testimony, to the extent of the candor 
and critical ability of the whole church. Kay, more, they quit 
the Sabbath and began to keep the Lord's day, and for this, 
there could have been no inducement or producing cause, but 
the honest conviction that they were not under the law, but 
were only to follow Christ and the apostles. And with the 
exception of a few Judaizers here and there, who have not even 
been able to make spots in history, there has never been any 
doubt on the correctness of observing the first day of the week. 



SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY? 85 



CHAPTER V. 

THE TEACHING OF THE SCRIPTURES RESPECTING THE DAY 
ON "WHICH CHRISTIANS SHOULD MEET FOR WORSHIP. 

The Scriptures are the only infallible rule of faith and practice. 
Just to the extent that they teach us on this subject we will feel 
warranted in asking that the practice of the whole church shall 
agree. We know that the early Christians did not keep the Sab- 
bath. We know that the apostles taught them that they were 
free from the law by the body of Christ, and hence that no one 
should be permitted to judge them in meat or drink, or in respect 
of a new moon or of a Sabbath. We know, too, that the early 
Christians understood that they were free from the law, and that 
they did not keep the seventh day, except a few Judaizing persons, 
who also kept Lord's day. But the question which now remains 
is what day should we keep? or should we keep any? Now, let 
it be said in fairness that the Scriptures are not very abundant 
on this subject. Happily, however, we are dealing now with 
believers, who will be satisfied with one full statement of com- 
mand from Christ or any one of the apostles, or any clear and 
certain practice. Those to whom we now appeal do not suppose 
that a great number of statements are necessary to make the 
Word of God true. 

I. The first fact that seems to govern in the matter, in the 
primitive church, was the resurrection of Christ on the first day 
of the week. Let me cite a few verses in the 24th chapter of 
Luke, which I think will be sufficient to prove that it was on the 
first day of the week that Jesus rose from the dead : 

"Now upon the first day of the week, very early in the morn- 
ing,they came unto the sepulchre, bringing the spices which they 
had prepared, and certain others with them. And they found the 
stone rolled away fromthe sepulchre. *"** And he said unto them ■> 
What manner of communications are these that ye have one to 
another, as ye walk, and are sad? And the one of them, whose 
name was Cleopas, answering said unto him, Art thou only a 
stranger in Jerusalem, and hast not known the tilings which are 
come to pass in these days? And lie said unto them, What/ 



86 SABBATH OR LOKD ? S DAY? 

things? And they said unto him, Concerning Jesus of Naza- 
reth, which was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God 
and all the people: And how the chief priests and our rulers 
delivered him to be condemned to death, and have crucified him. 
But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed 
Israel: And beside all this, to-day is the third day since these 
things were done. Yea, and certain women also of our company 
made us astonished, which were early at the sepulchre; And 
when they found not his body, they came, saying, that they had 
also seen a vision of angels, which said that he was alive." 

There can be no doubt in the mind of any one who believes 
this account to be correct, that Jesus rose from the dead on the 
first day of the week. This event is of the greatest importance. 
It was his victory over death that was to be celebrated to the 
end of time. It was great to speak a world from naught, but it 
was greater to redeem. And no event so concerned the race as the 
resurrection; overcoming the unseen; conquering the last enemy. 
Israel had been commanded to keep the Sabbath because they 
had been delivered from the bondage of Egyptian slavery, but 
while their Sabbath was a fitting rest from the toils and hard- 
ships of the merciless lash of the taskmaster, the Christian's 
first day is a fitting symbol of that new life and new joy which 
we have in Christ; and while their Passover might tell surely 
enough of that mercy which had spared them whil e God admin- 
istered justice to Egypt, the Lamb slain from the foundation of 
the earth, seen in the Lord's supper, is the chosen mark of the 
purchase price which redeems from sin and death. 

It would seem most unreasonable that we, having come to the 
Antitype should now return to the shadow. 

Jesus appeared to His disciples several times that day in a way 
to enlighten them upon the subject of the purpose had in view 
in his coming into the world. He showed himself to them by 
many infallible proofs, to Mary, to other women, to Peter, to 
two disciples as they walked into the country, and then again to 
the ten as they sat at meat that evening. And at last He opened 
their minds that they might understand the Scriptures, as He 
rehearsed to them what was said of Him in the Law and in the 
Prophets and in the Psalms. 



SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY? 87 

II. Christ met especially with His apostles on the first day of 
the week. See John 20 : 19-29. 

" Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week., 
when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled 
for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and 
saith unto them, Peace be unto you. And when He had so said., 
he shewed unto them His hands and His side. Then were the 
disciples glad, when they saw the Lord. Then said Jesus to 
them again, Peace be unto you : as my Father hath sent me, even 
so send I you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them, 
and saith unto them, Keceive ye the Holy Ghost: Whosesoever 
sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whosesoever 
sins ye retain, they are retained. But Thomas, one of the twelve, 
called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came. The other 
disciples therefore said unto him, We have seen the Lord. But 
he said unto them, Except I shall see in His hands the print of 
the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust 
my hand into his side, I will not believe. And after eight days 
again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them: then 
came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and 
said, Peace be unto you. Then saith He to Thomas, Reach hither 
thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and 
thrust it into my side; and be not faithless, but believing. And 
Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God. 
Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou 
hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have 
believed." 

The first meeting of the Master with His apostles must have 
been of the most joyous character. His breathing on them, and 
promising to them the Holy Spirit; the commission which He 
gave them must have inspired them with new thoughts and pur- 
poses. The recollections of the occasion would never depart 
from them during their lives; and they would fill the first day 
of the week with sacred and holy thought. They could not fail 
to see in it connections with the new life in Christ. 

It seems, too, that the Master was intending to impress this 
thought and feeling on their hearts by appearing to them in a 
remarkable way on the next first day. 

But when we speak of Jesus appearing to the disciples "aftes 



8S SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY ? 

eight days," and yet on the first day of the week, our Advent 
friends make quite a stir about our assumption. They claim 
that the language can not mean less than an intervention of eight 
days, and that this second meeting was therefore near the middle 
of the week. 

It seems. as nothing to them for us to say that the critics in all 
ages of the church have regarded it as equal to saying, that on 
the next first day of the week, Thomas being with them, Jesus 
came, etc., for the literal interpretation, according to our way of 
computing time, will suit their theory better. I will quote Dr. 
Barnes on this passage, as a sample of the whole number of com- 
mentators. He says : 

" And after eight days again — that is, on the return of the first 
day of the week. From this it appears that they thus early set 
apart this day for assembling together, and Jesus countenanced 
it by appearing twice with them. It was natural that the apos- 
tles should observe this day, but not probable that they would 
do it without the sanction of the Lord Jesus. His repeated 
presence gave such a sanction, and the historical fact is indisput- 
able that from this time this day was observed as the Christian 
Sabbath. See Acts 20 : 7; 1 Cor. 16 : 2; Rev. 1 : 10." 

From this decision I know of no author of note who dissents. 
One would naturally suppose that they have had some reasons for 
this unanimity of opinion. But as our Sabbatarian friends are 
not willing to grant that these men have had any reason for their 
conclusions, except the necessity of finding authority for an un- 
scriptural service, it seems proper and right that we should turn 
aside for a moment and ask upon what authority they all suppose 
that "after eight days" means on the next first day of the week. 

It seems to be known to every one except Sabbatarians that 
the ancients were accurate in the use of ordinals— first, second, 
third, etc. — but in the use of the cardinals— one, two, three, etc. 
— they were quite inaccurate, as we decide accuracy. It is on 
account of this looseness of speech that Matt. 17 : 1 — "six days 
after " — is equal only to about "eight days after" — Luke 9 : 26. 

Compare a few passages on the resurrection of Christ and it 
will be clear that the cardinal eight days after is the eighth 
day, put in ordinals. In John 2: 19: "Destroy this temple, 
and after three days I will raise it up again." With Adventist 



SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY ? 89 

count this would require three full days to intervene, counting 
the day of crucifixion one, and the day of rising would be the 
fifth. And yet in Matt. 27 : 67 the promise was made that He ' 
would rise again on the third day. Hence their cardinal " after 
three days " was exactly equal to their ordinal, " on the third 
day." Compare Mark 8:31 with Matt. 16 : 21, and we have 
these two ways of computing time fairly contrasted. Accord- 
ing to Mark, Jesus said "after three days," but according to 
Matthew he said, " on the third day." Now the only way these 
statements can be reconciled is by acknowledging the different 
modes of counting time. That these were the exact equal of 
each other, no man who believes the records dares to deny. 
And yet according to Advent calculation they would differ two 
days. "After three days" would place three whole days be- 
tween the death and the resurrection of the Savior ; "on the 
third day " makes the number two less.. According to 1 Kings 
12 : 5-12, we read : 

"And he said unto them, Depart yet for three days, then 
come again to me. And the people departed. And king Keho- 
boam consulted with the old men that stood before Solomon his 
father while he yet lived, and said, How do ye advise that I 
may answer this people? And they spake unto him, saying, 
If thou wilt be a servant unto this people this day, and wilt 
serve them, and answer them, and speak good words to them, 
then they will be thy servants forever. But he forsook the 
counsel of the old men, which they had given him, and consult- 
ed with the young men that had grown up with him, and which 
stood before him : and he said unto them, What counsel give 
ye that we may answer this people, who have spoken to me 
saying, Make the yoke which thy father did put upon us lighter? 
And the young men that were grown up with him spake unto 
him, saying, Thus shalt thou speak unto this people that spake 
unto thee, saying, Thy father made our yoke rnavy, but make 
thou it lighter unto us; thus shalt thou say unto them, My little 
finger shall be thicker than my father's loins. And now where- 
as my father did lade you with a heavy yoke, I will add to your 
yoke : my father hath chastised you with whips, but I will 
chastise you with scorpions. So Jeroboam and all the people 



90 SABBATH OR LORD "9 DAY ? 

came to Kehoboam the third day, as the king had appointed, 
saying, Come to me again the third day.'' 

■ Here again it is seen that " after three days " means the same 
in their style of computation as "on the third day.'' And in 
Esther 4 : 15 ; 5:1, the same manner is preserved : 

" Then Esther bade them return Mordecai this answer, Go, 
gather together all the Jews that are present in Shushan, and 
fast ye for me, and neither eat nor drink three days, night or 
day : I also and my maidens will fast likewise ; and so will I go 
in unto the king, which is not according to the law ; and if I 
perish, I perish. Now it came to pass on the third day, that 
Esther put on her royal apparel, and stood in the inner court of 
the king's house, over against the king's house : and the king 
sat upon his royal throne in the royal house, over against the 
gate of the house." 

Matt. 27 : 62-6-4 is a case in hand : 

"Now the next day, that followed the day of the preparation, 
the chief priests and Pharisees came together unto Pilate, say- 
ing, Sir, we remember that that deceiver said, while he was yet 
alive, After three days I will rise again. Command therefore 
that the sepulchre be made sure until the third day, lest his 
disciples come by night, and steal him away, and say unto the 
people, He is risen from the dead: so the last error shall be 
worse than the first." 

Now by every rule known to hermeneutics we are compelled 
to say that in their manner the cardinal " after three days." 
or "after eight days," was only equal to their ordinal "on the 
third day," or "on the eighth day." Hence it is that all the 
critics have regarded the language of John to mean on the 
eighth day after, which could mean nothing else than on the 
next first day. 

This, too, accounts for Tertullian making use of the eighth 
day for the resurrection day. This language was common also 
to many others. 

III. The Holy Spirit came, to remain on the earth, on the first 
day of the week . 

For the present we take it for granted that the day of Pente- 
cost was the first day, for we will argue that point in another 
and more proper place. 



SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY ? 91 

Jesus had promised them a new Helper or Comforter, one that 
would remain with them forever, who would guide them into all 
truth, who would receive the things of Christ and deliver them 
to the apostles, and bring all things to their memories that he 
had taught them. This was the meaning of His command to 
them to tarry in Jerusalem till they were endued with power from 
on high. This is not to say that no mortal had ever received the 
Spirit before that in any way, though it was said (John 7 : 39) 
that the Holy Spirit was not yet given. It must mean therefore 
that He had not been given in the way and for the purpose con- 
tained in the promise of Jesus to His apostles. On the day of 
Pentecost they were baptized in that Spirit — put entirely under 
His control. Joel had seen this event in connection with those 
appointments by which the world should be furnished with the 
light of God that bringeth salvation to all men. (See Joel 2: 28, 29.) 
This day was regarded by the apostles as their beginning of the 
new system of religion in Christ. Peter, after he had been to 
the house of Cornelius, defended himself for going in unto one 
who was uncircumcised, and especially for admitting them to 
gospel privileges. His appeal was to the baptism of the Spirit, 
which he says was like that which had been granted to the Jew- 
ish brethren "at the beginning." We know then that they 
regarded this new state of things, witnessed by the presence and 
power of the Holy Spirit, as beginning on the Pentecost, which 
we shall see was on the first day of the week. 

This leads us to notice that it was on this occasion that the 
new law went forth. A law had been given from Sinai, which 
had served as a schoolmaster, in preparing the people for the 
acceptance of Christ that they might be justified by faith. But 
all through the period of Israelitish prophets they were being 
informed that there was a coming One, who should establish 
His throne with justice and judgment, in whom the Gentiles 
would trust, and for whose law the isles of the sea should wait; 
whose right it should be to rule, who would overturn and over- 
turn till all things should be put under his authority. The very 
time, place and circumstances of the going forth of this new 
law was seen by the prophets. 

In Isaiah 2 : 1-5, we have an inspired view of this topic : 

" The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah 



92 SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY? 

and Jerusalem. And it shall come to pass in the last days, that 
the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top 
of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all 
nations shall flow unto it. And many people shall go and say. 
Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the 
house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us' of his ways, 
and we will walk in his paths: for out of Z: : n shall go forth the 
law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And he shall 
judge from among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: 
and they shall beat their swords into plow-shares, and their spears 
into pruning-hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, 
neither shall they learn war any more. O house of Jacob, come 
ye. and let us walk in the light of the Lord. 

To the same effect, and in almost the same language, is the 
statement made by the prophet Mieah, 4:1,2: 

" But in the last days it shall come to pas-, th : the mountains 
of the house of the Lord shall be established in the top of the 
mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills: and pe 
shall flow unto it. And many nations shall come, and say, Come, 
and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house 
of the God of Jacob: and he will teach us of his ways, and 
we will walk in his paths: for the law shall go forth of Zion. 
and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem." 

Let us note a few facts in these prophetic statement- : 

1. That this law should go forth from Zion and Jerusalem, or 
from Mt Zion in Jerusalem. 

2. That the law should be first present* 1 to the descendants 
of Jacob. 

3. That it would gc forth in the last days of Judah, as a 
people, and Jerusalem [as a city of the Jews;, or shortly before 
the ruin of that people. 

4. At the time of this law going forth all nations should be 
represented. 

•5. These peoples shall have flown to Jerusalem to hear the 
word of the Lord. 

6. The effect of this law will be to make peace, to subdue the 
brutal passions of men, and cause wars to cease. 

Xow. as we know that the law of Christ is the last revelation of 
God to the race.it follow ^ his law which was referred to. 



SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY? 93 

It was offered first to the seed of Israel; it went forth from Zion; 
it was shortly before the fall of Jerusalem and the dispersion of 
the Jewish people, and all nations were present (by representa- 
tives) at that time. (See Acts 2 : 5). The gospel, the law of 
Christ, which went forth on that occasion, is the law of peace; 
its justice and mercy will remove cruelty and bloodshed. Indeed, 
every feature of these predictions has its fulfillment in the occa- 
sion of the Pentecost. 

Not only so, but the comment of the Master on these Scrip- 
tures fixes their meaning beyond a peradventure. See Luke 
24 : 44-49 : 

" And he said unto them, These are the words that I spake 
unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be 
fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the 
prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me. Then opened he 
their understanding, that they might understand the Scriptures, 
and said unto them, Thus it is written, and thus it behooved 
Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day : and 
that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in 
his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. And ye 
are witnesses of these things. And, behold, I send the promise 
of my Father upon you : but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, 
until ye be endued with power from on high." 

When we search for the " thus it is written " for the condi- 
tions of pardon being preached among all nations, beginning at 
Jerusalem, we are taken right back to the Scriptures which I 
have quoted from Isaiah and Micah. Hence we have the com- 
ment of Jesus respecting those prophecies. 

This enduement for which they were to wait had been prom- 
ised by the prophet Joel (2 . 28, 29), and reiterated by the Master 
(John 14 : 15, 16, 26 ; 15 - 26 ; 16 : 7-14). All these promises were 
fulfilled on the Pentecost. Acts 2 : 3, 4, 14-18 : 

"And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of 
fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled 
with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, 
as the Spirit gave them utterance. . . . But Peter, standing 
up with the eleven, lifted up his voice, and said unto them, Ye 
men of Jiidea, and all ye that dwell at Jerusalem, be this known 
unto you, and hearken to my words : for these are not drunkem 



94 SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY ? 

as ye suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day. But 
this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel, And it shall 
come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my 
Spirit upon all flesh : and your sons and your daughters shall 
prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old 
men shall dream dreams : and on my servants, and on my hand- 
maidens, I will pour out in those days of my Spirit ; and they 
shall prophesy." 

Now, when an inspired apostle says, " TJiis is that which was 
spoken of," etc., it is not safe to say it was not. Hence we are 
bound to see in the events of the Pentecost the fulfillment of 
Joel's prediction, or deny the inspiration of Peter. 

And that they understood this also to be the fulfillment of 
the promise of the Lord to them, there can be no doubt. They 
now act under the commission in preaching repentance and 
remissions of sins to the people. And afterward, when like 
demonstration attended him at the house of Cornelius (Acts 10 : 
44-48; 11 : 15-18), both Peter and the other apostles understood 
it to mean that to the Gentiles were granted repentance to life. 
This question was settled by showing that the same manifesta- 
tion was there which attended them " at the beginning.'''' 

There is, therefore, no other conclusion possible, but that the 
first Pentecost after the ascension of Jesus was the time of the 
beginning of the gospel being preached in its facts. See 1 Cor- 
15:1-4. 

This event was never lost sight of by the apostles and early 
Christians. The new law of the newly coronated King now 
goes forth. Hence it is the birth-day of the kingdom of Christ i 
the Church of Christ on earth. 

Jesus had said, "On this Bock I will build my church," and 
now, the foundation having been laid, the structure begins to 
rise, constituted of lively stones, built up an spiritual house, as 
God's dwelling place upon the earth. 

But some one denies, perhaps, that the Pentecost came on the 
first day of the week. To this let us devote a little attention. 
The institution of the Pentecost, or the feast of weeks, shows 
that it always occurred on the first day of the week. See Lev. 
23 : 15 : 21 : 

"And ye shall count unto you from the morrow after the 






SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY? 95 

sabbath, from the day that ye brought the sheaf of the wave- 
offering ; seven sabbaths shall be complete : even unto the mor- 
row after the seventh sabbath shall ye number fifty days ; and 
ye shall offer a new meat-offering unto the Lord. Ye shall 
bring out of your habitations two wave-loaves of two tenth- 
deals : they shall be of fine flour, they shall be baken with 
leaven, they are the first-fruits unto the Lord. And ye shall 
offer with the bread seven lambs without blemish of the first 
year, and one young bullock, and two rams : they shall be for a 
burnt-offering unto the Lord, with their meat-offering, and 
their drink-offerings, even an offering made by fire of sweet 
savour unto the Lord. Then ye shall sacrifice one kid of the 
goats for a sin-offering, and two lambs of the first year for a 
sacrifice of peace-offerings. And the priest shall wave them 
with the bread of the first-fruits for a wave-offering before the 
Lord, with the two lambs : they shall be holy to the Lord for 
the priest. And ye shall proclaim on the self -same day, that it 
may be an holy convocation unto you : ye shall do no servile 
work therein. It shall be a statute forever in all your dwellings 
throughout your generations." 

The meaning of Pentecost is fiftieth, and having numbered 
seven Sabbaths, the day following, the fiftieth, would be the 
Pentecost, as seen in the sixteenth verse. Hence the giving of 
the law of Christ, the beginning of the gospel, the descent of 
the Spirit, the birth of the reign of Christ on the earth, came 
on the first day of the week. 

Indeed, the law from Mt. Sinai seems to have b«en given on 
the first day of the week. Compare Ex. 12:18; 19:1, 14-16, 
and the following facts appear : the lamb was killed on the 14th 
of the first month ; it was on the third day of the third month 
that the law was given. " The self -same day " does not mean 
the day of the month on which Israel started from Egypt, for 
there is no reference to that event. It means the first day of 
the month. Add two to this, then thirty for the previous 
month, then seventeen for the first month (for only thirteen are 
to be subtracted, seeing that the lamb was slain on the 14th), 
and you have the law given on the fiftieth, which, in itself, 
seems to be the origin of the Pentecost. 



96 SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY? 



CHAPTEK VI. 

HOW THE APOSTLES L/XDERSTOOD THE SUBJECT OF THE 

LORD'S DAY. 

We have seen already that they did not regard themselves 
under the law, and that they did not keep the Sabbath; that 
there is no case on record where a company of Christians only 
met together on the Sabbath day for any purpose. And yet it is 
probable that those Judaizing teachers who came down to Anti- 
och, and taught that they must be circumcised and keep the 
law, or they could not be saved, kept the Sabbath. But if it had 
been regarded as binding on Christians, we should have had at 
least some account of its observance somewhere. We have 
seen, too, that the apostles taught the disciples that they were 
free from the law, and that no man had any right to judge them 
in respect of the Sabbath. We have seen, too, that the Christian 
world has been a unit on the subject of the observance of the 
Lord's day, or first day of the week. We have also seen many 
reasons why they should have reached this conclusion, but we 
now come to examine more closely into what the apostles have 
said concerning this matter, directly. 

From Hebrews 10 : 25, we learn that they had a regular day or 
time of meeting together, for it is inconceivable that they should 
be exhorted to not neglect the assembling of themselves together, 
if there was no appointed time for such a gathering. Xo one 
could be blamed for not being present, if there was no under- 
standing as to the time and place of meeting. We learn, a little 
on this side of the apostles, that they had a stated time, namely, 
on Sunday — the resurrection day — when they met everywhere, 
in the villages and in the country localities, where they could do 
so without being persecuted, and where they could do no better 
they met in caves and fastnesses of the mountains. 

But the question which now engages our attention is, What 
have the apostles said directly on the subject of keeping the 
Lord's day, or first day of the week? This brings us to our ar- 
gument number 



SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY ? 97 

IV. The primitive church met together on the first day of the week 
to break bread. This is the direct statement of Acts XX : 7. 

A number of things are said in answer to this, such as that 
such language does not declare a practice, but simply records an 
occurrence. Once in the history of Christian work it happened 
that they met on the first day of the week to break bread, and 
that is nothing more than an incident. 

And yet, if Sabbatarians could find somewhere in the New 
Testament, a gathering of Christians for Christian worship, only, 
on the seventh day, it would be regarded as a custom, and there- 
fore a guide to Christians at the present time. 

They try to tell us that there is no evidence that Paul regarded 
the day as sacred, from the fact that he went on his journey the 
next morning, which, according to their count, was still the first 
day of the week. Let us read the connection, beginning with 
the fourth and closing with the eleventh verse : 

" And there accompanied him into Asia, Sopater of Berea; 
and of the Thessalonians, Aristarchus and Secundus, and Gaius 
of Derbe,and Timotheus; and of Asia Tychicus and Trophimus. 
These going before, tarried for us at Troas. And we sailed away 
from Philippi, after the days of unleavened bread, and came 
unto them to Troas in five days; where we abode seven days. 
And upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came to- 
gether to break bread, Paul preached unto them, (ready to depart 
on the morrow) and continued his speech until midnight. And 
there were many lights in the upper chamber, where they were 
gathered together. And there sat in a window a certain young 
man* named Eutycus, being fallen into a deep sleep; and as Paul 
was long preaching, he sunk down with sleep, and fell down from 
the third loft, and was taken up dead. And Paul went down, 
and fell on him, and embracing him said, Trouble not yourselves; 
for his life is in him. When he therefore was come up again, 
and had broken bread, and eaten, and talked a long while, even 
till break of day, so he departed." 

Kowfromthiswe learn, (1) That they remained there at Troas 

seven days, and therefore passed a Sabbath in that place. 1 1 ence, 

if there was any such observance as Sabbatarians contend for, 

it is unaccountable that no mention is made of it. (2) The pur- 

7 



98 SABBATH OB LORD'S DAY ? 

pose of the Lord's day meeting will account for their remaining 
there the seven days. TVe have no other custom which will indi- 
cate any sufficient reasons for this delay. (3) " "When the disciples 
were met together to break bread" is the manner of recording a 
custom, not a mere occmrence. Hence, to read the passage sim- 
ply to find its contents, leaves the conviction on all minds, as 
we have seen before, that they met for the purpose of breaking 
bread, and that he might enjoy that communion with them, Paul 
had remained that length of time with them. 

But it is said that Paul went on his journey on that day: not 
only so, but he went on foot, across the country. They forget 
that there is no reference to his stopping any time during his 
whole ministry for the Sabbath, and that their argument would 
ruin then' doctrine of the Sabbath. Paul was in haste to reach 
Jerusalem by the Pentecost, and if he should have gone forward 
on that day rather than to take his chances of finding another 
opportunity to cross the waters, there would be nothing strange 
about it. Still, they have to assume that the first day of the 
week, on which they met together to break bread, and the 
"morrow,*' on which he was ready to depart, were the same day. 
In the second place, they assume that the journey spoken of in 
the thirteenth verse was on the first day of the week. It is not 
so stated; neither is it a necessary inference. And in the third 
place there would be nothing in it, if they should be able, under 
the circumstances, to find Paul going on his way. What we do 
know is that the disciples met together to break bread, and that 
this was the purpose for which they met. It was therefore to 
them a day of sacred devotion in the service of the Lord. 

V. Paul's directing the saints in their worship on the*first 
uay of the week, both in Corinth and the churches in Galatia. 
shows that the day was everywhere so employed. See 1 Corin- 
thians 16 : 1, 2. 

It is sometimes said that this language does not indicate that 
the first day of the week was regarded as a sacred day, for it was 
to be devoted to secular purposes; they were to make it a day of 
!money raising, or for the laying apart of some of their income 
for the purpose of sending a present to the saints who were in 
Judea. 

TTe find that all bodies of Christians do, and ever have, pro- 



SABBATH OB LOBD'S DAY ? 99 

vided on this day for the temporal necessities of those for whom 
they are responsible. If they have not done this wholly on the 
first day of the week, they have at least largely accomplished 
that work on that day. Can we prove in that way or by that fact 
that they have not regarded the day as sacred? To ask the ques- 
tion is enough. Every man who will stop long enough to think, 
will acknowledge that their providing for this benevolence can 
in no way interfere with the idea that they regarded the day as 
sacred. Indeed it strengthens that thought. To make such 
provisions for the needy, would be as religious an act as could 
be performed on that or any other day. 

Again, it is said that there is no evidence that they met together 
at all on the first day of the week; that the only direction in the 
matter is that of laying by in store such an ' amount of their 
earnings as they would be able to spare. 

But the very purpose had in view in this request would be 
defeated in that way. Paul thought he might be in great haste, 
and there would be no time for such gathering of means after 
his arrival, and therefore he would have it all provided in a 
place where it might be used at once ; that if he should reach 
the city in the evening and wish to depart in the morning, 
the contribution would be ready, and that no time would be 
lost. But if this money should be at their homes, the collection 
would yet have to be made. But why request them to lay by 
them in store on the first day of the week ? Why not say to 
them, Lay up all you can till I come, so that the amount which 
I ought to take will be provided for ? It is not too much to say 
that such would have been his directions in the matter if such 
had been his thought. 

It is strange again, if they are correct in this view, that the 
whole Christian world differs with them in reference to it. 
Almost everywhere it is cited as a rule for raising the necessary 
expenses of church and missionary work. 

The rendering of this passage by Benjamin Wilson in the 
Emphatic Diaglott brings out the meaning more clearly than 
that of the Common Version : 

"And concerning the collection which is for the saints;— as 
I directed the congregation in Galatia, so also do you. Every 
first day of every week, let each of you lay something by itself, 



100 SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY ? 

depositing as lie may be prospered, so that when I come, collec- 
tions may not then be made."' 

Dr. Macknight takes a like view of the passage and renders 
it: 

"How concerning the collection which is for the saints, as I 
ordered the churches of Galatia, so also do ye. On the first day 
of every week, let each of you lay somewhat by itself, according 
as he may be prospered, putting it into the treasury, that when 

I come, there may be then no collections.'' 

The Doctor takes the same view of the purpose of the collec- 
tion which has already been mentioned, and therefore urges that 
the use of a treasury or chest was employed by them for this 
purpose. He then says: 

" From this passage it is evident that the Corinthian brethren 
were in use to assemble on the first day of the week for the pur- 
pose of worshiping God. And as the apostle gave the same 
order to the Galatians, they likewise must have held their relig- 
ious assemblies on the first day of the week.' 1 

The only rational way of accounting for this order is the 
thought which has been generally, almost unanimously, adopted 
— that Paul selected the day on which the congregation met for 
worship, and ordered that at these regular meetings they should 
thus participate in the contribution. This will account for the 
same demand being made of the Corinthians that was made of 
the congregations in Galatia. 

If we were looking for the one great purpose of the meeting 
on every Lord's day. it would be the same as that of the church 
at Troas— ' ; the breaking of bread/' or the communion. That 
this may appear to us as it was, let us turn and read 1 Cor. 

II • 20-30 : 

:t 'When ye come together therefore into one place, this is not 
to eat the Lord's supper. Lor in eating every one taketh before 
other his own supper : and one is hungry. and another is drunken. 
What ! have ye not houses to eat and to drink in? or despise ye 
the church of God, and shame them that have not? "What shall 
I say to you? shall I praise you in this? I praise you not. For 
I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto 
you, That the Lord Jesus, the same night in which he was be- 
trayed took bread : and when he had given thanks, he brake it, 



SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY? 101 

and said, Take, eat; this is my body, which is broken for you : 
this do in remembrance of me. After the same manner also he 
took the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is the new 
testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in re- 
membrance of me. For as often as ye eat this bread, and 
drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord's death till he come. 
Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of 
the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of 
the Lord. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of 
that bread, and drink of that cup. For he that eateth and drink- 
eth unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not 
discerning the Lord's body." 

The evident meaning of this severe reproof is that they should 
meet together for the purpose of partaking of the Lord's supper, 
but by their abuse of this holy appointment they were not really 
partaking of the supper at all. They had turned it into a kind 
of club dinner, or a Sunday feast, and had left the spiritual im- 
port of the beautiful, solemn service. It reveals the fact, how- 
ever, that they should meet together for the purpose of breaking 
bread. The time of their meeting is found in the first part of 
the sixteenth chapter, which, as we have seen when clearly 
translated, was on every first day of the week. 

Thus it is seen that, like the church at Troas, so the churches 
at Corinth and the churches in Galatia met every first day of the 
week to break bread. Hence these meetings furnished an op- 
portunity for Paul's benevolent enterprise— raising money for 
the needy. 

VI. Our sixth and last argument is founded on Rev. 1 : 10 : 
" I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day." 

On this passage Smith's Dictionary of the Bible (American edi- 
tion) has this to say: "It has been questioned, though not seriously 
till of late years, what is the meaning of the Greek phrase, he 
Tcuriake hemera, which occurs in one passage only of the Holy 
Scripture, Rev. 1 : 10, and is in our English version translated 'the 
Lord's day.' The general consent, both of Christian antiquity 
and of modern divines, has referred it to the weekly festival of 
our Lord's resurrection, and identified it with the first day of 
the week, on which he rose, with the patristical ' eighth day,' or 
* day which is both the first and the eighth,' in fact with the 



102 SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY ? 

ha tou haliou hemera, Solis Dies, or Sunday, of every age of the 
church. 

" But the views antagonistic to this general conduct deserve 
at least a passing notice. (1) Some have supposed St. John to 
be speaking, in the passage above referred to, of the Sabbath, 
because that institution is called in Isaiah 58 : 13, by the 
Almighty himself, ' My holy day.' To this it is replied, if St. 
John had intended to specify the Sabbath he would surely have 
used that word, which was by no means obsolete, or even obso- 
lescent, at the time of his composing the book of the Bevela- 
tions. And it is added that if an apostle had set the example of 
confounding the seventh and first days of the week, it would 
have been strange indeed that every ecclesiastical writer for the 
first five centuries should have avoided any approach to any such 
confusion. They do avoid it, for as Sabbaton is never used by 
them for the first day, so kuridke is never used by them 
for the seventh day." 

The writer then proceeds to show that other interpretations 
were equally unsound, and that it must have the meaning gener- 
ally agreed upon, namely, that of the first day of the week. 
Next the author shows us that all men. have ever understood the 
Lord's day to refer to the day of the resurrection, or first day of 
the week. I have given a number of the quotations which are 
given here, but I will notice a few which I have not noticed be- 
fore, that you may see just how the fathers understood these 
words. I quote Mr. Smith's use of them. See Yol. II; pages 
1676-1680 : 

" The epistle ascribed to St. Barnabas, which though certainly 
not written by that Apostle, was in existence in the early part of 
the second century, has (c. 15) the following words : ' "We cele- 
brate the eighth day with joy, on which too Jesus rose from 
the dead." 

The author then quotes Dionysius, bishop of Corinth, as using 
language quite as strong and clear as that which is put to the 
account of Barnabas. Then he quotes from Melito, bishop of 
Sardis, who had written a work on the Lord's day. He then 
says: 

" The next writer who may be quoted is Ireneus, bishop of 
Lions, A. D. 178. He asserts that the Sabbath is abolished ; 



SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY ? 103 

but his evidence to the existence of the Lord's day is clear and 
distinct. It is spoken of in one of the best known of his frag- 
ments. Victor, bishop of Eome, Clement of Alexandria, Ter. 
tullian, Origen, Minucius Felix, Cyprian and his colleagues, 
Commodian, Victorinus, Peter, bishop of Alexandria. He in- 
troduces them all as holding the same views and as using the 
same phraseology respecting the first day of the week. ' They 
call it Lord's day, first day, eighth day, resurrection day, 
Sunday, but they never call it Sabbath.' " 

The only reason why these men never speak of Christians 
meeting for worship on the Sabbath day — except a few Juda- 
izers who kept both days— is because they did not meet on that 
day. 

After Christ rose from the dead and was made both Lord and 
the anointed One — Acts 2 . 36 — the word Lord constantly refers 
to him. Before this it was used of the Father, and afterward, 
when a quotation from the Old Testament was employed contain- 
ing such use. But after it was known that all authority in 
heaven and earth had been given into his hands ( Matt. 28 : 18, 
19, ) the apostles employed this term wholly of Christ. 

We have already seen that Christians used the " Lord's day " 
of the first day of the week. We have not found, and can not 
find, that they ever spoke of the seventh day of the week by that 
phrase. No more could it refer to the Sabbath of the Decalogue, 
than " The Lord's Supper" of 1 Cor. 11 : 20 could have meant 
the Jewish Passover. As it meant the supper, or breaking of 
bread in honor of Jesus, so this day was the day of victory 
through his resurrection from the dead. " The Lord's day " of 
Kev. 1 : 10 not only refers to the first day of the week, but the 
use of it there shows that the phrase was familiar to all the 
saints at that time. To have employed an obscure term would 
have defeated his purpose entirely. No other day than this 
would have been regarded as worthy of such honorable distinc- 
tion. It was the day of the Lord's victory over death; the day 
on which he appeared to his disciples by many infallible proofs ? 
the day of the Spirit's descent ; the day of the announcement of 
his kingdom, and the beginning of his church ; the day on which 
remission of sins was first offered to the world in his name ; the 
day on which his law went forth from Zion and his word from 



104 SABBATH OR LORD'S DAY ? 

Jerusalem ; the day on which, from the very first, his disciples 
met to break bread, in memory of his dying love. 

]STo wonder John "was in the Spirit on the Lord's day." 
"While he was in exile for his devotion to Jesus ; while he was 
maltreated by the great enemy of the race, who had put his 
Master to death, the return of this day would fill his heart with 
the thoughts of certain -victory. He knew that the disciples 
were then everywhere remembering the Lord's death, were pray- 
ing for his exile, and for the Master's intervention in his behalf. 

The disciples soon learned that the first day of the week, being 
the Lord's day, was not then day; it was not a day for secular 
pursuits, or social mirth, but a day of holy joy in the solemn 
service of the Savior of men. 

A word to the reader, and I have done. Let no man judge you 
in meat or in drink, or in respect of a holy day, or of the new 
moon, or of the Sabbath. The cross of Christ is of none effect 
to you, if you are justified by the law. But no flesh is justified 
by the law in the sight of God. We have seen that the whole 
law, Sabbath and all, was done away in Christ, and that we are 
now only under law to Christ. And we now lay down the chal- 
lenge of Elijah, changed to our present subject : If Christ is 
our lawgiver, serve him ; if Moses is our lawgiver, serve him. 
Tne mixing of the law and the gospel has been the great weak- 
ness of the church. I exhort you, therefore, to use your freedom 
in Christ Jesus ; to stand fast, therefore, in the liberty of a Chris- 
tian, and. be not entangled in the yoke of bondage. 



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The Divine Demonstration. 

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BY H. W. EVEREST, LL. D., 

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The author of this work is well known as one of the ripest scholars and 
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and at the same time to present an overwhelming demonstration of the 
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umes, they lose half their force. Nor should this demonstration require a 
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treated. One, chapter is devoted to a classification of objections and a 
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rather than a negative one. The argument from prophecy is concisely but 
fully given. Two corollaries follow the demonstration, the Canon and 
Inspiration, since the authority of Christ must settle both these questions. 
401 pages, 12mo cloth $1 50 



THE TRACT. 



EXTRACT FROM AX ESSAY BY EXOS CAMPBELL. 

I look upon the use of tracts in our missionary work as of incalculable value. 
A tract! — What is it? A printed page, merely! A page on -which some good man 
or -woman has spent a world of thought! The object is to gain a human soul. A 
tract! Verily, the most difficult of all literature to -write effectually! 

God's plan is to arouse the whole human family by the enunciation of the single 
truth: "This is my Son, the beloved, in whom I delight;" and he has added to 
this the single command: " Hear ye him.'' And when we gather close up to the 
Great Teacher, lo! we have the simple parable; and what is that but a tract? 
Flung out broadcast over the vast multitudes that hung upon his lips, and who 
cried out in the wild enthusiasm of their Oriental natures, " Never man spake as 
this man." who can estimate the power of these inimitable stories over the rough 
masses of human creatures around him? 

The use of the tract, then, in the work of the saving of souls, either at home or 
abroad, is invaluable; nor is its agency altogether of modern date. Before the 
age of printing Wycliffe circulated his views by means of brief essays, which were 
passed from hand to hand and transcribed by those who wished to preserve them. 
Tyndale, also, in 1530, distributed tracts, and found them a potent influence in 
reaching the benighted masses around him. In 1742 John "Wesley, that grand 
worker and mighty man of God, began the publication and distribution of tracts, 
and was the first to set the example of modern cheap prices sustained by large 
sales. In 1T95 Mrs. Hannah More commenced, in Bath, the sale of what she 
called "Cheap Repository Tracts," of which 2.000,000 were sold the first year. 
The work thus commenced by individual effort has grown wonderfully, and by 
organized combinations has developed a work overpowering in its magnitude. 
" The Religious Tract Society," of London, was founded in May, 1799. In fifty years 
it has received and expended nearly 16,000,000. It has published, of various larger 
works, 5,138 volumes in 110 different languages — of which it has issued 500.000,000 
copies; and the whole number of books, great and small, up to 1S61, was 912,000.000 
in 114 different languages. Our own beloved country is not behind in these grand 
works. " The American Tract Society," of New York, organized in 1825, reported 
in 1861 its gross receipts in money at $6.8S4,237. It has published 16,635,583 of 
larger volumes, and of tracts 219.454,676, with an aggregate number of pages of 
5,882,630,598 — and all this astounding work done in less than forty years. 

The tract, then, and its living exponent, are potent energies in the hands of God 
for poor sin-troubled souls. The tract system is growing in the estimation of 
earth's greatest workers, and they have shown to the world: 

1. The tract is the least expensive of all agencies for the good of man. 

2. It is the most direct of all teachings, for it has no room for preambles, but 
without looking at or caring for surroundings, it goes straight to its mark, and asks 
the question, " Do you love Jesus ?" 

3. It is the most modest and unobtrusive of all messengers. It will go any- 
where — stay anywhere — wait any length of time without being offended, until it is 
noticed. It finds its way into places where the more pretentious book could not 
gain admission — into the drinking saloons, the gambling hells, the theaters; into 
the most hideous and disgusting haunts of vice it goes without a tremor for its 
reputation, or a care for its safety. 

4. It does not resent being blasphemed and villified. It is used to being tossed 
out of doors with a growl or a curse, or trampled contemptuously in the mud. It 
knows it will frequently be torn into shreds and flung to the winds. In all humility 
and patience it renews its attack on sin, allied with multiplied thousands like 
itself, until at last it gains the conquest. . 

5. It comes to the poor man's cottage, far away from all churches, where there 
are no books, nor songs, nor prayers, nor holy lives, and quietly bides its time 
until the overworked wife and mother has time to peruse its pages; and then, 
bright memories of other and better days, when she heard of God in her child- 
hood's home, come vividly before her, and, as she reads, her heart warms to th« 
little sheet that tells of rest over yonder; and then she reads it to husband and 
children, and all feel the better for the consolation it brings. 



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